Army Specialist Nicholaus E. Zimmer Memorial Highway

Poetry by Hugh Martin

Northeast Ohio Writer

is what the sign says 
but doesn’t say we called  
our seventy-ton tanks    

Steel Coffins doesn’t
say you bravely wore those
briefs smeared with Icy Hot 

doesn’t say you stole 
soup crackers from the chow
hall doesn’t say how nights

you buffed for fireguard
the barracks hall doesn’t 
say you polished boots all 

of us boys outside those
June nights squatting on milk 
crates disappearing 

the Knox dusk 
our shaved heads our hands
slick with polish always

our last task before lights 
out doesn’t say you swung 
that horsehair brush heel 

to toe and told us what 
you and your girl did 
in some hot tub after hours 

the Elizabethtown 
Holiday Inn bunk-
mate battle-buddy Nick

I’m here in your home-
town between two exits 
where maybe you skated 

blasted Flogging Molly 
drove dates to the movies
when you came home closed

casket your dad said All
we wanted was to open
it up and touch him 

Hugh Martin

Hugh Martin, an Iraq War veteran, is the author of In Country (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2018), The Stick Soldiers (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2013), and So, How Was the War? (Kent State UP, 2010).  His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, GQ, The American Scholar, Gulf Coast, and many other venues. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.