If you can imagine being snatched out of your bed and tossed into a spinning industrial clothes dryer filled with running chainsaws and silk pillows you’ve got a pretty good handle on Leo Jenkins’s new poetry collection, war{n}pieces. You will not know where you are, or which way is up, and you might get cut, or a little bit nauseous once in a while, but there’s gonna be some soft bits as well, and overall, it’s going to be one hell of a ride.
Leo is a former Army Ranger medic turned globe traveling poet with a handful of books to his credit. This volume is published by the fine folks at The Dead Reckoning Collective, a veteran owned and operated publishing company that seeks to close the divide between civilians and veterans by sharing their stories.
It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of you reading this are not followers of poetry, but this is a great place to start. These are the words of a poet with dirt under his fingernails who is no stranger to the ghosts that show up unwanted. In “ILD” when the writer’s rhyming poems are critiqued harshly by the educational establishment, he responds:
I found it tough to read most of these poems without imposing an Eminem style beat. Many are fast paced and hammering with rhyme schemes that sneak up on you. Others are more akin to the lyrical master, Dr Seuss. My favorite poem of the collection is, “Share What You Can”
WHAT THE FUCK? As Jules from Pulp Fiction would say, “That is some serious gourmet shit!”
But just when I felt I had a handle on Leo’s style, he drops in a Villanelle. Of course, he does. For those of you savages unschooled in formal poetry, a Villanelle is ahighly structured poem made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain, with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. The most famous example is Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night.” In it, the first and third lines of the first stanza alternatingly end each successive stanza and the final 4-line stanza ends with the both lines.
Villanelle’s War
And the collection bounces around in style, subject, and form like a pickup barreling down a rutted dirt road. Those that hold on are rewarded with gems like, “Dear War”, a breakup letter with the GWOT, “The Story of Strength in Reverse” with the line: “If you’ve got a dying breath, You’ve got a breath!/ You’ve got something left!” and the title poem “war{n}pieces” buried near the back of the collection.
Poems like “you{we}me” take on the current social fight and the fuckwits who seek to divide the American people:
Leo follows that up with “What’s Heard”, which provides another perspective and urges communication. The themes that run through this collection are combat and its aftermath, relationships and their aftermath, and politics and the deeply divided world we find ourselves in. This is best captured in the poem:
Two Simple Things
I could go one citing examples and lines I loved, but you’re going to have to pick up a copy and find your own favorites. And like a Marvel movie, may sure you sit through the credits and make it to the end. Buy it, read it, learn from it. You can pick up a signed copy along with some other cool shit at the Dead Reckoning Collective:
https://deadreckoningco.com/products/war-n-pieces-book
John Dailey is a retired Marine Special Operator who still works for Uncle Sugar. He is the editor of ‘The Raider Patch’ magazine and enjoys running ultra-marathons and drinking beer—not in that order.The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Special Operations Command, the United States Marine Corps, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government.
