Army SMART Book: Inspirational Quotes (II)

Karen Skolfield
Women in Military
U.S. Army photo by Cpl. Clay Beyersdorfer/Released

When your shot is exhausted, knock down the enemy with the stock of your rifle. If the rifle stock be broken, bite with your teeth. 
—Russian Military Reader

Two stoppered rifles. 
You hadn’t guessed  

she’d look like you. 
Even the enjambment in  

her eyes: Same. Tiny breasts. 
Jawcurve, waistsmall. 

Fists that once were hands.
Perfect, exceptional teeth.

Karen Skolfield’s book Frost in the Low Areas (Zone 3 Press) won the 2014 PEN/New England Award in poetry. Her new poems appear in BoulevardThe Carolina Quarterly, Crazyhorse, GuernicaSlice, and elsewhere. She is an Army veteran who teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 

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