Elegy for Dennis, More Soldier Orchid than Blood Brother by Fritz Ward


 

First the heat.
Then the clouds.
Then the rain
falling like teeth
from the sky’s mouth.
 
 
 

Fritz Ward’s poems have appeared in more than seventy publications, including American Letters & Commentary, Another Chicago Magazine, Blackbird, and Gulf Coast. He received an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is a recipient of the Cecil Hemley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America. His full-length manuscript, Dear Cannibal, has been a finalist and semi-finalist for the Academy of American Poets Walt Whitman Prize, the National Poetry Series, the Washington Prize, The Brittingham Prize, Four Way Books Levis Prize, and several other contests. He currently lives just outside of Philadelphia and works at Swarthmore College.