excerpt from Child of the Enemy

IV.  The Exiled 
 I liked it in South Vietnam.
 - Lieutenant William Calley

Later     when the black
and white photographs came in    the rice
sinking in its makeshift grave at the right
of the picture    three children wound
about their mother like meat on a spit    one eye
rolling loose    amazed    in the dead

silence of the frame    the freshly dead
posed hastily    each wound
breaking open like a smile    each eye
cocked as if winking under the black
hood of hair    the stalked rice
a backdrop    nobody wanted to write

the story    after all    no american in his right
mind would rise to this black
mission    109 civilians dead
gunned down in the eye
of the hunt    it was never about them    the rice
lush in ways their children could never be    wound

so tightly to old wounds
the chinese    the french    now this blue-eyed
christ seated at the right
of the throne    coming to save them from a black
plague that left so many dead
rotting in fields like unharvested rice

this is where it began    in the rice
paddies of vietnam    my mother    her right
hand gripping the earth’s black
pillow    the night bleeding like a wound
the soldier digging into her with the dead
weight of his lust    every star an amazed eye

rolling loose in the night    nine months    i
had just one picture taken in saigon    my black
hair sprouting    toes wound
in knots    mouth like a fist    the rice
paper riddled with figures    my right
foot inked    marked like a prayer for the dead

listen    you don’t know me    eyes wild as rice
like wounds scarred black
lieutenant    if revenge is a rite of passage    i need you dead 
from Asylum
by Quan Barry