THE WARTIME ISSUE Rosemary Winslow   MORNING ROUTINE When the news comes on, a square of night snaps with ragged fire, or there's more bloody damage in harsh sunlight. Some city or god-forsaken road. Then I turn to brew coffee, scramble up eggs, click the off buttons, head out the door. Subways, offices, the human chorus in concert. Nobody mentions the war. That brick I picked up from a thousand laid in rows by a sculptor on a lawn in New Hampshire last fall – it was the third one from the beginning, the third of the "personnel" killed. I knelt down, unwrapped the black cloth, and read the data taped to the back: 23, from Buffalo, my home town. I hardly ever think of that now. I don't remember his name. I remember the boy in that Robert Frost poem turning away just a second as his sister called "Supper" and a snarling buzz saw bit off his hand. Everyone there by the sister turned away from the darkened pulse. They had their work, there was evening, they were alive, and cold kept falling, burying.     Rosemary Winslow lives in downtown DC and teaches at Catholic University. Her poems have appeared in Poet Lore, The Southern Review, Crux, 32 Poems, and other magazines, and in Voices from Frost Place and other anthologies. She has received two Larry Neal Awards for Poetry, and writers' fellowships from the District of  Columbia Commission on the Arts and The Vermont Studio Center. Published in Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2006.   Read more by this author: Rosemary Winslow Rosemary Winslow: The Whitman Issue Rosemary Winslow: Evolving City Issue Rosemary Winslow: Split This Rock Issue