The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Adam Tavel
Operation Pike, Vietnam, 1967
for W.D. Ehrhart In sleep I drift through fog until the skull returns—that village newborn’s temple burst like eggshell, rags drenched in mist, his mother’s arms still cradling him though blood spills down her breasts where shrapnel split her like a rations tin. What can my stupid ghost absolve for the ghost morphine makes her there, a dappled moan that slumps at last to birth her own release? Bill, all week your book of nightmares pulls me back to this one page I have no right to name. I thrash awake and find no better end for when a body is at last a song of flies, the pity needle’s pinch, a breeze through hunched Marines who rise and limp away. Before Photography
It was impossible to keep a face by amber candlelight and fight the ache named midnight, starless, sooty as the veil graveyard gloves draped across a vanity for good. Each time the widow closed her eyes she saw less nose, less neck, less collar stains dark as dimes spilling from a burned mite box. When a daughter grew old enough to ask what father looked like, she was told he was this tall, the mantel held his pipe and hat, your brothers hemmed his overalls. Sometimes after a house was snores, one lonely hand slid under sheets and found some pleasure there remembering a silhouette of fog. Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication |