NVN Sunday: DEPARTMENT OF OFFENSE

by Pamela Kenley-Meschino

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Friday that the U.S. Navy was renaming the U.S.N.S. Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment ship that had been named for a Navy veteran who was one of the country’s first openly gay elected officials. —The New York Times, June 27, 2025

*

Whitewash the walls of history,
erase names preserved by heart in print.
Cleanse the bows of ships 
so they sail free of reminders
or memorial suggestion.
Forget you heard it here, where someone 
stood for the voiceless inheritors,
crossed lines for the dispossessed,
or raised flags in mutinous colors of freedom.
Toss stories into fire pits, ashes to ashes, 
amnesia thick. Footprints embedded in truth
brushed aside like counterfeit ledgers going nowhere. 
 
Even with evidence destroyed or misidentified, 
these burials are not complete. Beneath layers of deception,
lies ferment in Earth’s volcanic depths, lives remembered 
for their audacious bravery walk from graves 
that were never deep enough to hold them down.

*

Pamela Kenley-Meschino is originally from the UK, where she developed a love of nature, poetry, and music, thanks in part to the influence of her Irish mother. She is an educator whose classes explore the connection between writing and healing and the importance of shared stories.