Blood Stripes

Aaron Graham's debut full-length collection is a haunting, unprecedented example of contemporary trench poetry. Set in Iraq during the mid-2000's, Blood Stripesdelves into the complexity and trauma of modern conflict. Through the eyes of a marine, these poems illustrate the intimacy of violence with candid brutality. Beyond the innate bonds formed between comrades, a strange communion develops across enemy lines as those charged with destroying each other do so with a kind of tenderness. Through inflicting atrocities, the speaker forges human connection--connections that cannot be replicated outside of war. In these poems, violence is a new creature, one that is concurrently loathsome yet addictive and sensual. Amid the shrapnel and the sand wet with bits of lung, this violence is perhaps born of a love of the struggle. While the marine unwittingly volunteers to be a harbinger of death, it is a role of eternal confinement. These poems reveal the moral ambiguity of the causal sequence of war, as at home the marine is haunted by trauma while continuing to crave it. The side effects of conflict cannot be outlive; despite quickclot being applied to a ruptured artery, some bleeding cannot be stopped.