|
Hometown Heroes
This is the news
mind you-
Action News-
between the bombs
bombarding us with heroes
from Norristown
and Ardmore-
so many baseball cards
for the big game,
or the war.
Show me that teenage girl
earring through her nose
a concert shirt dropping
casually to her knees,
barefoot on the courthouse lawn
in Everybody's Hometown.
She went to war herself-
last week in the Coffee Club,
I saw her posting flyers for
her rally.
Only thirteen people came
But there she was out front,
indomitable
smile
bursting from her lips,
sign bouncing at the passing traffic:
"Honk for Peace!"
and a man,
lips disposable razor blades,
high in the rarefied air
of his Jeep Cherokee
placing a crooked middle finger
against the window
the girl shrugging,
a blouse strap
swooning from her shoulders,
her face suddenly still,
an unassuming village
thoughtless of assault.
Are Liberated
I
Out of the well-oiled plumes of Baghdad
a long white box of a truck, impassive,
approaching down the highway
that tastes dry
as my resolve.
Yesterday, I painted a warning sign,
thick dark lines
and portentous swirls
my hand unsteady
moving against the grain
of my Ohio training.
I hope it said:
"Be safe. Stop for inspection."
The truck approaching,
dust billowing like thawbs
from militant wheels
dark shapes shift in the front seat
heedless of my sign,
and the warning shots cracking
into polluted skies.
Seven months ago
In the peaceful wink and crackle
of an August bonfire
Gina Sindar's tanning booth toes
sieved through grains
of Huntington Beach
while my lips roamed free
along her neck and shoulders.
We were getting away-
she in a week to Yellow Springs
and I, poor city boy and school-resistant fool,
to the army reserves.
Ginnie's probably waving signs,
laying in the streets,
or limp in the arms
of a helmeted officer
in riot gear.
I see her in a cell defiant,
as we open fire.
II
The skull of the truck roasts in the sand.
Long, dark, innocent fingers-
an index, a middle, fallen apart
against the remnants of a door.
Jerry Canning-
self proclaimed commander
of Operation Desert Clown-
parts his arms like Moses:
"You are liberated," he says.
Lips pale with SPF
shades like two black caps
holding shaken liquid in,
he spies a hairless leg thrown free from the ruins:
"Go, now. In peace."
Our sergeant stands akimbo
murmuring "Christ,"
less like expletive than explanation.
It must be morning in Ohio
Ginnie free-
Thanks to her father,
Cleveland Clinic
anesthesiologist,
she's back on campus by noon,
angry, proud, and planning
the next incursion into the streets
of her nation's capital
while iron bars slide around my heart
and squeeze.
I stand soaking in a foreign sun,
unfed, unwashed
and uncaressed,
a prisoner of war.
[Home]
|
|
