An ekphrastic poem from my manuscript-in-progress, Civilians, is now up at Consequence, a literary journal dedicated to “focusing on the realities and effects of war and geopolitical violence.” Civilians will be the third book in my military spouse trilogy of poetry collections, which I began with Stateside in 2010 and followed up with Dots & Dashes in 2017.

I love writing poems about visual works of art; this particular came to me during a night of terrible insomnia. I sat in the darkness looking at paintings, until I found Winslow Homer’s extremely gorgeous “The Veteran in a New Field.” The painted struck me as the perfect representation of life, post-military, both peaceful and overlaid with darkness, the uniform cast off but not entirely left behind.

You can read the poem here.