Three Hernandez's,
the last name of
a former student,
who trained harder than most,
wanted karate skill
and something
to believe,
and enlisted in January 2001
after drifting in and out of school,
from job to job
until nearly thirty,

Ramos next, though,
wife living nearby,
I'd likely hear
something.
Finding the face of
Staff Sgt. Gene Ramirez,
dark and handsome
like a movie star,
but screen heroes
never die in Al Anbar,
Pfc. William C. Ramirez,
19-year-old scowl
a reflection of dread,
as if his photograph knows
a roadside bomb
waits to claim his life.
Pfc. Christopher Ramos,
a child's face pulled
Marine Corps taut, and
Lance Cpl. Hector Ramos,
who departed this life when
his helicopter crashed
near Ar Rutba,
so far from his family
in Aurora, Illinois.
Sgt. Miguel A. Ramos-Vargas
has only a helmeted silhouette,
not even a real picture,
killed when an enemy rocket
impacted near his position
in Baghdad,
who came from Mayaguez,
Puerto Rico, where
you must pay taxes
and obey the laws of
the United States of America,
but have no say
in the election of
a Congress,
a Senate,
a President
who can send you
to die on foreign sand, like
Spc. Aleina Ramirez-Gonzalez, of
Hormigueros, Puerto Rico,
killed when a
mortar round struck
her forward operating base
in Tikrit, and
Sgt. Joel Perez, of
Rio Grande, Puerto Rico,
who was aboard
a CH-47 Chinook
helicopter when it
was shot down by a
surface-to-air missile
near Falluja, like
Sgt. Juan M. Serrano, of
Manati, Puerto Rico,
whose friends and family
could not vote for
or against the men
who sent him to die
in Iraq, like
Staff Sgt. Kendall Thomas, of
St. Thomas, Virgin Islands and
Staff Sgt. Salamo J. Tuialuuluu,
of Pago Pago, American Samoa,
killed when his
Stryker military vehicle
received enemy fire
during convoy operations
in Mosul.

An empire marshals armies
from beyond its borders,
from captive lands held
by coercion, persuasion,
edict and sword,
sends the children
of those without privilege
to die for imagined glory,
for dynasty,
sends citizen soldiers,
who leave behind
wives, husbands, kids,
parents and lovers,
high school buddies and
heart-broken sweethearts,
children recruited in
high unemployment and
low wage peacetime,
from The Bronx, New York,
Shelbyville, Indiana,
Odessa, Texas,
White Bear Lake, Minnesota,
Kannapalis, North Carolina,
Howell, Utah,
sent from Anytown, USA,
but not from
Kennebunkport,
Cape Cod,
Malibu,
Pebble Beach,
Hilton Head,
not from mansions
in the Upper West Side,
townhouses in
Georgetown,
majestic colonials
on Beacon Hill,
not from
Princeton,
Yale,
Cornell,
Stanford,
not from
Wall Street
but from
Main Street,
not from
the secure streets
where
politicians and
lobbyists live,
not from
the prudent houses
of Supreme Court Justices
not from
the homes of those
who dispatch the sons
and daughters of America
to die for an empire,
their blood
the cost of conquest,
the calculus of lives
counted only as
the price of doing
the empire's business.

Poet, novelist and singer/songwriter Phillip Henry Christopher spent his early years in France, Germany and Greece. His nomadic family then took him to Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio and Vermont before settling in the steel mill town of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, where he grew up in the smokestack shadows of blue collar America. Escaping high school, he made Philadelphia his home, alternating between Philly and cities across America, living for a time in Buffalo, New Orleans, Fort Worth, even remote Fairfield, Iowa, before settling in Indianapolis. While wandering America he has placed poems and stories in publications across the country and in Europe and Asia, including such noteworthy journals as The Caribbean Writer, Gargoyle, Lullwater Review, Blue Collar Review, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Blind Man’s Rainbow and New York Quarterly.