Judge Tony Barnstone’s comments: “This poem’s portrait of the ordinary grimness and griminess of military life, punctuated by moments of extraordinary stress, could be the merest cliche, just a topical poem about (one assumes) the war in Iraq that relies on current events to lend it power and emotion. But it’s not. I love the details of the poem–the soldier who sprays his trousers with Febreze (which I use to get the smell of cat piss out of my pillows and couch), the protagonist whose armpits and breasts are bombarded by the desert sun’s heat bombs, the helicopters blading past like giant dragonflies gone bezerk. I felt that the poem faltered a bit here and there (I’m not convinced that the characterization of the enemy as ‘bad boys / who played with daddy’s rockets / when mommy wasn’t looking’ is an effective irony). Finally, though, what sold me on the poem was the simplicity and psychological rightness of the protagonist’s focus on that sweat-stained bra, a rightness which comes back even more powerfully in the thoughts which run through her mind as war zone life returns to its strange normality of television and Jeopardy after the bombardment ends: ‘My toenails are horrible; / they need clipping.’”