the war

 

 

 

I played with army men up until my sixteenth birthday.

 

                     I know,

 

It's unrealistic to believe

 

a sorcerer's spell

 

made their plastic arms

 

come alive in a real war

 

                     that I imagined

 

where Milkdud

 

bombs were dropped

 

and the loudness and the weight

 

of the dead,

 

and the speeches, so safe

 

                    where my generals stood

 

as gluttonous for glory.

 

 

 

I had an Indian man (from another war)

who held his knife above his head

and who fought and fought

with avarice for the land

 

in my little freezing room

until  all the other plastic men

were dead,

 

my face cold, and laid out

with their glass stares, still

in their hauberk tunics

of chain mail.

 

The one I called Sarge, I grieved for

and sent letters to his parents

an a tearful goodby to his girl

 

as the deified ancestral spirits

often enclosed in a circle

of Kachina  porcelain

 

and doll beliefs

 

Reviews

[TLK]

This mixes the imagined and the real so artfully that I truly don't want to know where one begins and one ends.

[Tree]

Just following miss Emily all the way here. And I can relate to this touching piece, in so many ways. I think I was that kid, too. Moving, well
constructed

[Emily B]

oh, outstanding! I've missed reading.

going to try to rest drink peppermint tea and treat my cold today, Nikki Giovanni is speaking at a local college tonight and I have to be there! I want my daughters to see what an American poet looks like.