Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
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 deadfrom Asylum
by Quan Barry