Author: Michael Shorb
Location: San Francisco, California

Michael Shorb's work reflects an abiding interest in myth, history, and the lyrical form, as well as a satirical focus on present day trends and events. His poems have appeared in over 100 magazines and anthologies, including The Nation, The Sun, Michigan Quarterly Review, Queen's Quarterly, Poetry Salzburg Review, Commonweal, Religious Humanism, Shoofly, Rattle, and European Judaism, as well as such anthologies as A Bell Ringing in an Empty Sky (Mho and Mho Works), To Be a Man (Tarcher Press) and Names in a Jar: 100 American Poets (Hood Press).

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World War

The old men
finished brandy
and cigars,
agreed there was no way
to settle
the gulf of differences,
the many issues,
the pressing concerns.

So they fed
their sons
into a meat grinder,
splintered their bones,
marched them like
bright lead soldiers
into the teeth of pain,
into the no man's land
where rhetoric
crawls to die,
where reasons fail
to draw a breath,
where flags are made
of burnt skin
and drying blood.

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