"Reporting from Fallujah" nominated for Pushcart Prize

The editors of Gival Press have announced that they have nominated my poem "Reporting from Fallujah" for the 2005 Pushcart Prize. This is a great honor, even if I don't get included in the final cut. I am very pleased.

"Reporting from Fallujah" was written almost ten years ago now, long before Sadam Hussein's regime was toppled. The poem was based on an actual reporter's account of his own near-abduction while reporting in Iraq.

Here is the poem as it appeared in the journal Purple Dream in June of 2004 and as later anthologized in Poetic Voices without Borders by Gival Press in May of 2005. Wish me luck!


Reporting from Fallujah

by
Gary Lehmann

I think it was the noise of the hob-nail boots
on the stairs at the end of the hall that first woke me.

In a place like this an abduction or disappearance
is always possible and it pays to make some plans.

I jumped from my bed and straightened the covers,
throwing two pillows against the wall.

I grabbed my bath robe and paddled toward the
sliding glass door that led to the open porch.

As I passed through the door, I slipped the latch
so it would lock behind me as I went out.

I just closed it, when I began to hear the pounding
of a bludgeon and the shouts of angry men.

I crawled under the plastic table and backed myself
into the far corner of the tiny porch.

Then I reached out for the leg of one chair
to further obstruct the view. That was all I could do.