The Dead Peasant's Handbook

By Brian Turner

After his wife, poet Ilyse Kusnetz, passed away from cancer, someone on Wikipedia edited Turner’s author entry and noted that Turner and Kusnetz were married up until the date she died. This was a painful thing for Turner to discover and come to terms with, so he wrote a poem, “Wedding Vows,” to explore how he felt and what it means to be married—even after one of the lovers has died. This is how the book came to be.

Will have QR codes within the book that link to an instrumental album created specifically for the poems in this collection, performed by Brian Turner himself along with his band.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alice James Books
• Release date: Nov 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781949944297

Book preview

— I —

ON WAR & CONFLICT

SUNFLOWERS

What they don’t tell you about war

is how much a bank ledger

might shape a decision tree.

The price of fuel. Sunflower oil. Durable

goods when they’re floating on an ocean

with no delivery in sight. That

bullets can skip along the surface of a wall

like stones over water.

That it’s a bad idea to tape the sheet glass

windows of your home, but smart

to roll down the windows of a car

when fleeing a firefight. That

you should open your mouth

to avoid rupturing your eardrums

when a shockwave rolls by. That

civilians are the bravest of all.

See how they face the invaders, saying

Take these seeds and put them in your pockets,

so at least sunflowers will grow

when you all lie down here.

What they don’t tell you about war

is that a soldier’s oath is not only

to be the one who puts out the fire, but

to be the one who starts the fire

to begin with, to be the one

who carves a hollow center

deep into the word suffering. War

is born of the obscene,

a disfiguration of words like love

or humanity. This much we know.

These things we do. These ghosts

we live with. How they call out to us

sometimes, asking for water. Such

a simple thing. A glass of water.

THE BODIES

The bodies lie along the shoulder of the road.

The bodies lie in an ambulance, a truck bed, a stretcher.

The bodies are strobed in flaring lights, color of fire, color of night.

The bodies rest within the fuselage of a plane at 36,000 feet.

The bodies contemplate silence as they wait in the morgue.

The bodies are moved from room to room, one hour to the next.

The bodies are bathed by strangers and by those who love them.

They are numbered and recorded with signatures and stamps.

They are forgotten by all save those who love them.

They are left to the fields, to the green embrace of earth.

They are given sunlight and storm, a shadow of wings descending.

They are given to rivers, to fire, to ash on the wind-driven rain.

They are carried on the shoulders of stone-faced men.

They are serenaded with tears, with the instruments of suffering.

They are eulogized in great halls and within the confines of loneliness.

They are lowered into the ground and into the vaults of memory.

They are disassembled and disbursed by the steady labor of time.

They learn more about compassion as they are lifted in someone’s arms.

They learn more about the sacred as voices call around them.

They learn more about grieving as their eyes are sewn shut.

The bodies are moved from room to room, one hour to the next.

The bodies are numbered and recorded with signatures and stamps.

The bodies are bathed by strangers and by those who love them.

The bodies contemplate silence as they await the mortician, and

they are forgotten by all save those who loved them.

TWELVE ROSES FOR THE DEAD

The militia kick a soccer ball

in the street. Young men. Graybeards.

Rifles, heavy weapons. Stories. Laughter.

Their shivering hands boil coffee

in a tin over a crude fire. The buildings

no longer buildings. Landscapes of rubble

given to howling when a storm comes in.

The cease-fire will be announced soon, and

the fighting will resume until the deadline.

A vital rail line must be captured, or defended.

Or perhaps a sympathetic town must be liberated.

In high-rise offices somewhere far away, architects

design new orphanages, new hospitals, maybe

a mausoleum to be placed in a cemetery

as a way to honor the dead.

There is too much good work to be done.

Lists of provocations, demands. Diplomatic teams

negotiating in distant cities, flashbulbs ringing.

And so the militia oil their bolts, check their radios.

They smoke their last cigarettes and