Editor’s Note: A pivotal World War II battle was fought on the beaches of France in the summer of 1944. The Normandy invasions by the Allied Forces resoundingly defeated the Germans, who occupied France, but the cost in lives was immense: over 425,000 lives were lost. Yet for the survivors, many more lives were “lost,” as Cindy Layton’s story recounts. Storming Normandy From the doorway I watched as Dad held the gun in his palm, inspecting it, not like they were old friends but business partners. It looked old but still deadly. Where did he get that? His bony fingers ran alongside the round barrel while his eyes traveled along the length of its metal frame. The door to the safe was open, exposing envelopes and a metal box. A purple velvet bag, showing the…

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  Bent   I can bend and break, mend and make amends, start riots and cry out— in surrender of once feeling stifled.   I can close my eyes and still see what is gained, lost, and corrupted;   for what is done does not die. It festers and flourishes— seeps into the hollows of every passing moment;   for pain itself is simply a shelter that serves to protect the past from the threat of being forgotten.   And yet how can I ever want to straighten my back   when I am stronger through this weight I carry?     Finite   You were not the orange hue from the streetlamp. You were the streetlamp as we lay upon my parents’ driveway on nights that were heavy with humidity and our quick, quick…

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Photo Credit: Tori Merkle Photography We met Daniel in Harvard Square, where he stood at the corner of Mass Ave and Brattle, typewriter poised to write a poem for a dollar. We asked him to write a poem for our dog, and what he pounded out on the old manual keyboard was sublime. We asked for more, and a correspondence ensued – Boston, New Orleans, Florida – and produced the following excerpts from his impressive body of work. Here’s how he describes his writing: As for the story of how I came to write poetry in Harvard Square: it has everything to do with my love affair with New Orleans, which started three years ago when I hitchhiked from New York to the Big Easy. New Orleans is a place where there’s an established legacy…

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