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Gerald Yelle |
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MY KOREA I have to envy your sleep on the unstable mattress. Mack trucks haul across my Philadelphia night. I.V. drips from a tanker, a thin red line leading back to Pyongyang, where your dad plays doctor, injecting GI's back from Japan with fun on their conscience. He charges less than his Unit. Inspections have him hiding needles in the pond. You scratch, toss, moan with every exhalation. I lick my palm and fret about your selling used cars for your landlord. Like your father, courting disaster, like having a name like Stufflebeam, nose buried in his Smart Book. Thank God boot camp doesn't last. One day he's in Manayunk humping like a monkey, the next, like me, corporal in an elite corps, in the kitchen feeding mice. You give fair warning: If they chew the electrical, kiss this Christmas goodbye. I have to wonder if I'll ever re-enlist. After your father: sleeping on duty, abandoning his post for the heated cab of a truck, then crying in his cell, clinging to the chaplain, sobbing, --Don't let them shoot me. My girl's knocked up --I'm friggin' just a child. [Index] |
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Thunder Sandwich #26 - Summer/Fall 2005 |
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