shadow and sunshine
angling the front lawn
as the son told me his father
had planned his death for a month
to stop the war bursting in his head,
the blood flying, the body parts,
floating in rice paddies,
the constant stench—
how he blew his brains out
to stop the stinking war
.
Mary Shay McGuire was introduced to poetry in grammar school when she was given book of poetry. Poetry has been with her since then and the gift was the impetus for her beginning to write poetry. She graduated from Newton College of the Sacred Heart—now part of Boston College—and then studied painting in Paris. Later she graduated from the Pennsylvania State University with an MFA in Writing Poetry. She has published poems in Vita Brevis, Literary Heist, Literary Yard and other venues and has won the Hackney Prize and the New Millennium Prize for poetry.
