Reading four poems from roughly 30 years ago, before departing for Okinawa from Vũng Tàu, 9/26/26

 

 

Laced Farina

Who touched your hair?
A rifle butt to the side of the head.

Who kissed you on the forehead?
Three knocks on the door at midnight.

Who put his fingers in your mouth?
It is like fireworks. One is thrown in the air.

Who unbuttoned your tunic?
Unbutton your tunic.

Who touched your breasts?
It is a crime to conceive.

Who rested his head on your belly?
One is undressed by the whizzing bullets.

Who played with your sex?
To be lying here in this ditch.



Slow Tribe

They are the usual three:
One, who fantasizes about my death;
One, who craves my sex;
And one, who claims to be restless.
They come, singly, at odd intervals, unannounced,
Bearing exaggerated miens and inexpensive gifts:
Plastic flowers, slurs, bits of lint, left-over food.
They pick fights among themselves whenever they meet,
Or they fuck on my bed, forgetting where they are.
I never ask them to leave, though I despise
Each one of them. They are my kin:
I, too, fantasize, claim to be restless, crave my own sex.


The Dead

The nine-year-old hockey puck
Bounced from the fender of an olive truck
Now bounces a leather ball on his forehead.
The old lady who scrounged potted meat
From foreign men lying in a mortar pit
Now sells gold jewelry in Santa Barbara.
The dead are not dead but wave at pretty strangers
From their pick-up trucks on Bolsa Avenue.
They sit at Formica tables smoking discount cigarettes.
Some have dyed their hair, changed their name to Bill.
But the living, some of them, like to dig up the dead,
Dress them in native costumes, shoot them again,
Watch their bodies rise in slow motion. 

The Fox Hole 

“Oh great,” she yells, “a fox hole!” and jumps right in. And just in time, too, because a shell immediately explodes a few feet away, throwing a clump of dirt on her head. She is bunched up like a mummy, but not too uncomfortable, a woman in the flush of youth squatting in a ready-made fox hole. Another shell explodes, this time even closer, and throws more dirt on her head. She is almost completely buried. There's dirt in her nose, in her eyes, in her mouth. A soldier could walk right over her and not notice that here, just beneath his feet, is a pretty woman squatting in a fox hole. But then she realized that she had been sitting on something. Something sinewy, bunched up. Was it a root? A hand? A hand grenade? 

 

 [hanging out with Okinawans in Kawasaki, Japan in 2018, as photographed by Samson Yee]