Seven year Army veteran Brian Turner arrived in Iraq in November 2003 as an infantry team leader with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. In November of last year, Turner published Here, Bullet, a book of poetry, and a record of his time as a foreign soldier in Iraq. Profiled on NPR earlier this year, Turner read selections of his poetry, which are still available on NPR’s website. Here is one of the poems reprinted there: "Eulogy," written after a soldier in his platoon took his own life.

Eulogy

It happens on a Monday, at 11:20 A.M.,
as tower guards eat sandwiches
and seagulls drift by on the Tigris River.
Prisoners tilt their heads to the west
though burlap sacks and duct tape blind them.
The sound reverberates down concertina coils
the way piano wire thrums when given slack.
And it happens like this, on a blue day of sun,
when Private Miller pulls the trigger
to take brass and fire into his mouth:
the sound lifts the birds up off the water,
a mongoose pauses under the orange trees,
and nothing can stop it now, no matter what
blur of motion surrounds him, no matter what voices
crackle over the radio in static confusion,
because if only for this moment the earth is stilled,
and Private Miller has found what low hush there is
down in the eucalyptus shade, there by the river.
   
                                                                                    PFC B. Miller
                                                              (1980-March 22, 2004)
More of Turner’s poems and readings are available Fishouse Poems.