Visualization by Martin Williits Jr.

We all have a place to go — 
we just have to get there, 
                                     a secret place. 


I’d be hauling bodies out of combat zones 
while bullets chewed the scenery into bits, 
and I’d be elsewhere — 


                                     back home 
on the farm, plowing (or was it a girl) 
planting seeds — 


                         I’d have to numb myself, 
going in, sprinting out, murmuring 
like a flock of starlings, 


             my mind would gather like that 
explosion of scattered flight, 
and somehow, killing never found me, 


             I’d rendered myself invisible, my mind 
lathering suntan lotion on a woman 
lying on a stomach, after removing her top, 


and when I came back, trying not to relive the past, 
visualizing no more War, but like a boxer, 
if I heard the bell, I’d go back again and again.

Martin Willitts Jr recently won Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, Artist’s Choice, November 2016. His recent full-length is "How to Be Silent" (FutureCycle Press, 2016), and his recent chapbooks are “Martin Willitts Jr Greatest Hits” (Kattywompus Press, 2016) and Turtle Island Editor’s Choice Award for his chapbook, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press).