~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Al Maginnes

How Voices Are Lost

I can’t hear my voice when I talk,

so a recording of what comes out

of my mouth strikes like an assault.

I was not born to the accent

I come dressed in. My mother still

bears New England in her voice

though she left before I was born.

And I found my voice in the round

cobbles of southern creekbeds,

the pecked-over red mud of fields

laid bare for winter. Now I sleep

in a state that made it through

the Civil War unburned, only

a few skirmishes to mark

its terrain. A friend more drawn

to the past than me found the story

of Lt. Walsh, who, in full uniform,

was drinking through the final days

of the war when a division

of Union soldiers rode into Raleigh.

Walsh, offended, fired a few shots

and jumped on a horse. No one was

hit by Walsh’s shots, so they chased

after him, caught him a mile away,

where, despite his uniform

he was hung. History says he came

from Texas, but no one mentioned

the sound of his voice as he made

his demand for a soldier’s death.

Al Maginnes published ten full-length collections and four chapbooks of poetry, most recently Fellow Survivors: New and Selected Poems (Redhawk Publications, 2023). New poems and reviews appear in Off Course, Cimarron Review, Arkansas Review, and many others. He lives with his family in Raleigh, NC.