Cigar: A Poem Written On Smoking Iraqi Soil

I joined the National Guard in 1997 after a 10 year hiatus from the military. I had joined the active duty Army right out of high school, mainly to get away from my parents. That’s what poor kids do to rid themselves of an unhappy past. The above paragraph is the first paragraph of a creative nonfiction blog post that I wrote last night at World Class Poetry Blog The poem is an introduction to the poem "Cigar," which I wrote while serving in Iraq in 2005. "Cigar" was recently published at The New Verse News.