My crotch is a mound of pounding hell
& there’s nothing I can do about it.
I’d like to be where Monistat grows
on trees, yeast is for beer & cottage cheese
is what you eat. But, I’m on deployment in Iraq.
I thought someone gave me something horrible,
my sisters set me straight. Hordes of insurgent
microscopic beasts planted spores down there.
Oozing burning misery, prove God, the earth,
Iraq & the US military hate women
or at least hate me.
I’m on a mission today & nobody cares
how I want to scratch, how I want to rub, how
I want to dive into the Tigris naked & plunge
my fist into the volcano.
My panties got so sweaty, it was salty torture
& itching death. I cut those panties off in the porta
potty with my Hajji mart Saddam knife.
Relief bubbles invade my belly making me shiver.
Our Blackhawk landed so, I had to button my trousers,
pick up my M16 & get back to work. Dropping
those panties into the muck & worrying someone
might find them the burning started again.
Sylvia Bowersox served her first tour in Iraq in 2003-2004 as a U.S. army broadcast journalist. Her assignments took her around the country, but much of her time was spent in Baghdad, at Coalition Provisional Authority headquarters, which serves as the background for much of her work. She returned to Iraq for two more tours as a press officer assigned to the U.S Embassy Baghdad public affairs office, and later to the Special Investigator General for Iraq Reconstruction. She lives with PTSD, and writes about her experiences in both wars. She has been honored by multiple Pushcart nominations. Her first book, “Triggers”, a chapbook of war journalism flavored poetry and prose, was published by JerkPoet Press. Her work has appeared in the journal 0-Dark-Thirty, The Chico News and Review, The Synthesis, Tethered by Letters, and The Washington Post. Sylvia received her B.A. in English Literature from San Francisco State University, and is currently completing a Masters degree program in English at California State University, Chico where she lives with her veteran husband and her Black Labrador service dog, Timothy and her teenage son Holden.
