Dog Tags and Ghost Roads is a poetry collection centered around military service, moving from enlistment and duty into combat, homecoming, and ultimate healing. Why did you choose poetry as the form for telling these stories of service and aftermath?

I chose poetry because it’s the one form that can hold the truth of military service without flattening it. Service, combat, homecoming, and healing don’t unfold in a straight line; they come in flashes, fragments, silences, and sudden memories. Poetry allows me to honor that reality. It lets the story breathe in the same rhythm that veterans actually live it. Poetry gives me the freedom to move between the personal and the universal. A single stanza can capture the weight of a moment, a hand on a rifle, a prayer whispered before dawn, the quiet shock of stepping back into civilian life, without needing pages of explanation. It creates an emotional closeness that prose often can’t, inviting the reader to stand inside the experience rather than observe it from a distance. It also respects what can’t be said. The white space, the pauses, the breaks between lines, those are places where trauma, memory, and meaning settle. In a book about service and aftermath, those silences matter as much as the words. Ultimately, poetry felt like the most honest way to tell these stories. It allowed me to capture the brutality, the beauty, the brotherhood, the ghosts, and the long road toward healing in a form that mirrors the lived experience itself.

How do you approach writing about trauma without overwhelming or distancing the reader?

When I write about trauma, my goal is to tell the truth without turning that truth into a weight the reader has to carry. Trauma demands honesty, but it also demands restraint. I try to give the reader enough clarity to understand the experience, while leaving space for them to breathe inside the poem. I focus on precise, human details rather than graphic ones. A sleepless night, a sudden flash of memory, the way a veteran scans a room before entering, these small moments invite empathy without overwhelming. They let the reader step closer at their own pace. I also rely on silence and white space as part of the storytelling. Trauma often lives in what isn’t said, and allowing the poem to pause gives the reader room to process. It keeps the experience intimate instead of confrontational. Most importantly, I write with dignity, not spectacle. The intent is never to shock or retraumatize. It’s to illuminate the lived reality of returning home, the wounds, yes, but also the resilience, humor, faith, and slow rebuilding that coexist alongside them. When those elements are present, the reader stays connected rather than pulling away. In Dog Tags and Ghost Roads, I want readers to feel invited into the experience, not pushed out by its intensity. The poems aim to honor the truth of trauma while still leaving space for hope, which is often the most honest part of the story.

How do you decide when a poem should feel expansive versus intimate?

Ultimately, the choice comes down to one question: Is this a moment lived by one person, or felt by many? Intimacy honors the singular. Expansiveness honors the collective. And sometimes a poem moves between the two, beginning in the quiet of one heart and ending in the wide echo of all who’ve carried similar weight.

That balance, that shifting distance, is where the emotional truth of Dog Tags and Ghost Roads lives.

What do you hope civilians take away from these portrayals of returning home?  

As the author of Dog Tags and Ghost Roads, what I hope civilians take away from these portrayals of returning home is an understanding that the journey back is rarely simple, and never as clean as the welcome‑home photo suggests. These poems were written from the quiet spaces after service, the places where memory, identity, and healing collide. I want civilians to see that returning home isn’t an ending. It’s a transition layered with relief, grief, humor, guilt, pride, and the slow work of rebuilding a life that no longer fits the same way. PTSD, moral injury, and the weight of what was carried overseas aren’t signs of weakness; they’re wounds that deserve recognition, patience, and respect. Most of all, I hope readers understand that connection matters. Veterans don’t need to be “fixed.” They need to be seen, without assumptions, without judgment, and without the expectation that they simply “move on.” When civilians approach these stories with empathy, they become part of the bridge that helps veterans find their way back to themselves.

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