Judy
Larger than life,
An all-American beauty to rival Lady Liberty,
I bloom across the page
In red, white and blue,
Pupils blown black from beyond the rainbow,
Way up high, I’m still your Dorothy;
Girl-tornado caged in blue gingham,
Doe-eyed and bow-lipped
Between the crosshairs
Of your DF-24.
I know how it feels
To fall asleep in a field of poppies,
To wake, shivering, eye lashes thick
With fluffy white asbestos.
Chainsmoking songbird
Choking amphetamine diet pills down
Another dress size with my juddering jaw,
Frozen in silk screen effigy, I thaw
Innocence killed as curtain falls,
Applause.
“I’ll get you, my pretty,” they said,
And they did,
But you don’t,
And you won’t,
I’m all gone.
Time Stops:
On November 2nd, 1965, Norman Morrison self-immolated outside the Pentagon, in front of his one-year-old daughter Emily, in protest of the Vietnam War. His wife, Anne Morrison Welsh, later told Baltimore Magazine about an interaction she had with a Vietnam veteran who was moved by hearing about Morrison’s self-immolation on the radio.
I. Norman
I wish she would stop
Peering up at me
With those curious green eyes,
Swimming in questions,
Eyes like rolling fields of green,
Sweet moss, gentle mint leaves,
She is snowfall on a frozen lake,
Everything that is pure and good
In this world of malignant hate.
Even to hold her, to take her out in the open,
Is a trial, for I can feel the contamination,
Leaching off of me, off of humanity, the rotten
And the cruel, the fallible man flesh, the faint stink of fossil fuel,
Foul lingering of Lucky Strikes on my coat,
And all the worldly emanations that accost us on the street,
Reek of piss in the gutters,
Iron-and-entrail aroma of the butchery,
Stomach-turning stench of sagging trash bags in an ally,
Bulging at suspicious angles,
All within a stone’s throw of the Pentagon, which
Despite its whitewashed columns and manicured lawn,
Stinks worst of all,
As we at last reach the front steps,
Stinks worse than any butchery,
As I weave unseen through the business rush,
Stinks of innocent blood, innocent eyes
Not unlike the ones I’m avoiding right now,
Boiling in napalm hell beneath a blackened sky.
Round and staring in wonderment.
I cannot bare to look at her, a tear threatening
As she tugs at my tie, cooing with soft reproach.
I grip the gas can, feel the seasick slosh of its noxious contents,
The kerosene threat of its half-full heft.
I try to move quickly, lifting it from the innocuous
Wicker basket at my side,
Anointing myself in one fluid motion,
Heart jumping with adrenaline, as I fumble for a match, and
With gas-slicked hands,
Strike.
Everything goes still. The crowd erupts
As flames leap up, a twelve foot inferno,
Streaks of black smoke screeching up into the blue,
I am transformed, purified, born anew,
I scream for Vietnam, but I no longer
Have a mouth, a tongue, a voice
My lungs expand, as fire’s hungry fingers
Fill the gaps in my insides, immolating, elevating,
Recreated, as flame shapes me, takes me
To a higher plain. I feel a pain, not mine
But that of children crying out across the sea.
Today, I am not a man on fire,
But a symbol, charred effigy, burning for a cause, burning for children, children like
Emily?
Whatever is left of me sighs in relief, as I hand her to a man beside me,
Unharmed, not crying yet, face caught between horror and shock, a storm-ripe sky
About to break, as at last, I let myself look,
Let myself see her, see
The red pyre of what was my body,
Flickering in her big green eyes, not unlike the eyes of
The thousands,
Hundred-thousands, children, in Hanoi, in Huế, in Quảng Trị;
They too have seen a father transformed,
And as the blackness creeps in, as her face begins to blur, I know
That it’s the last face I’ll ever see, and I know
That I’ve made the right choice.
II. Emily
I am cradled,
Head lolling heavy in big arms,
Great thick trunks of tweed,
Boughs unbreakable, invulnerable, unshakable,
And me, round and plump,
Precious fruit, caul-soft peach,
He will never leave me. Suddenly
My world is rocked,
My tree is struck,
Heat against my cheek,
Lightning, or some evil
Bolt from God, all at once, he is
Swallowed, he is
Gone.
III. Anne
I don’t hang up the telephone.
Just let it fall. Let myself drop it,
Hand gone stiff and limp
Like a doll.
The clock keeps ticking.
Maybe it doesn’t know
That time has stopped.
The toaster pops, the coffee pot goes cold,
Air conditioner humming, refrigerator running,
Keys in the ignition, I’m running,
Part of me stays in the kitchen,
Maybe forever, I already miss her
The woman I was
Before I picked up the phone,
Before I started running
No time to look back,
Park badly, leave the car running,
Cross the street, running,
Traffic stops
For the woman running
Through the hospital parking lot,
Maybe screaming,
Maybe not,
Maybe I never stopped, running,
Double doors slide open in slow motion,
Running through the waiting room,
No one stops me,
Maybe they know who I am,
Don’t know,
Just go, running,
Fly to her side,
And she is in my arms,
Swaddled in white
Like the first time I held her,
Hospital blanket
Smells too clean,
I catch a faint
Basenote, kerosene
As I hold her close
To the nape of my neck,
And for the first time since the phone rang in the kitchen,
I breathe.
In the morgue my husband is crumpled in a black bag,
Somehow smaller than before,
A soft pink mass,
Melted wax statue,
Face erased, every line, every freckle, every gray hair,
The things you hardly notice, the things you don’t miss,
Until they’re not there,
Until you can’t kiss
The soft curl at his temple,
The faint scar beneath his lip;
A bike accident. He won’t ride
Anymore.
I identify him by the silver wedding band that hangs,
Untouched,
From the curled black husk that was his hand.
That is where the story ends. I know
Fade to black, credits role,
I am footnote, an honorable mention,
Pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain
Picking up the pieces, cradling the wreckage, I know
He is a hero, a martyr, I know
I am a widow, a nuclear shadow.
I don’t get to grieve,
Don’t let myself
Get angry,
Get selfish,
There’s no room for it, though
My grief is as ugly
As anyone else’s.
Don’t let myself feel it,
Until it’s just me,
Raising three, just me,
Burying a son at 16,
Cancer. I almost envy
How he didn’t have to know,
Didn’t have to watch him go.
Time stops for him,
But not for me.
IV. Unnamed Soldier
I’ve been lying so still
For so long,
I think I might be dead.
If I am dead, it’ll be a long time
Before anyone finds me
Disguised neatly beneath
A layer of woven reeds,
Crouched in the dim hull
Of the tunnel that has become my home.
What is a foxhole,
If not a grave you dig yourself?
Lying on the sunken hollow of my stomach,
My hip bones dig, knife-like,
Into cold, dry, flat-packed clay.
Days without rest have taken their toll.
These tunnels have a way of whispering,
Stretching echoes into phantom footsteps,
The slightest sound;
Something stirring on the surface,
The gentle play of jungle rain,
Even the settling of fallen leaves
Is now the slow creep of the enemy.
It almost makes me miss
The constant drone of helicopters overhead,
The relentless, rhythmic percussion of gunfire;
Silence at war brings no solace,
No promise of peace. Silence at war
Means one of two things,
Neither of them good:
Either you’re alone
Or you’re not.
I don’t know if it’s day or night.
I don’t know how many of us are left.
If any of us are left.
I can’t sleep, can’t risk
Missing the rough crackle of my radio. It’s been days,
Days without a single word
Dead air. No birds.
A growing ache throbs in my ankle,
Wedged at an odd angle against the heel of my AK.
I welcome the pain.
It keeps me awake. Suddenly,
Something breaks
The sacred silence,
Static escapes
The radio. Threatening hope,
I train my ears for a familiar voice,
But am met with something else,
The hoarse whisper of a far-flung frequency,
A broadcast blown astray by fate’s
Strange winds across Pacific waves,
Tells of a man from the U.S.A.
Who stood outside the pentagon,
Who set himself on fire,
To protest the war in Vietnam.
My face is hot. The cool dusty ground
Beneath my cheek softens
As I weep, spill
Precious salt into the earth
For a man that I will never meet.
It’s a comfort, even now, to know
If I am dead
I’m at least not alone.
