Vietnam War Poetry
  • Home
  • Featured Poet
  • Founding Poet
  • Contributing Poets
  • Submissions
  • News & Updates
    • Nam: Then & Now
  • About Us
    • Contact
    • Site Map
    • 404
  • Home
  • Featured Poet
  • Founding Poet
  • Contributing Poets
  • Submissions
  • News & Updates
    • Nam: Then & Now
  • About Us
    • Contact
    • Site Map
    • 404

VIETNAM  WAR  POETRY
​
ANN QUINN 

​​                        Three years after my father's
                        final deployment to the Gulf of Tonkin 

                        In first grade we spent our free time drawing
                        on big sheets of soft urine-colored paper
                        the kind that would tear with no sound
                        like a piece of American cheese--
                        it would even muffle the sound of the pencil
                        darkening the page.
                        The other girls drew houses and people
                        I and the boys drew planes
                        dropping bombs. Were there people
                        on the ground? I just remember the difficulty
                        of drawing good planes. Because we were
                        drawing them from another pilot's point of view--
                        you saw the side of the plane, the cockpit,
                        and the bombs squeezing out the rear
                        like turds—but how to show the wings?
                        The wings were even worse than
                        the girls' task of drawing feet and noses. 


                        by Contributing Poet  Ann Quinn   Copyright © 2015 
                        VWP 2016     First published in    Bethesda Literary Festival contest
                                                                                  for a year after winning 1st prize    2015 

​

                        Antiphon:  Catonsville Nine, a soldier 

                        The group spoke individually
                                                I overheard a reference to me as a baby-killer
                        during the 10-minute burning period
                                                we were met with protesters at the gate
                        about their objections to warfare and social injustices
                                                with a barrage of tomatoes
                        They also joined hands in a semi-circle and repeated the Lord's prayer
                                                in both the Seattle airport & the Denver airport I was spat upon
                        accompanied by licking flames.

                        Catonsville Times,   May 1968
                        Sgt. David E. McCray,   Vietnam veteran 


                        by Contributing Poet  Ann Quinn   Copyright © 2016 
                        VWP 2016     First published in  VietnamWarPoetry.com 
​


                        Navy Junior 

                                                Lemoore, California, 1967

                        1.   Digging to China

                        Days we play indoors,
                        away from the heat and smog.

                        Evenings, I climb the jungle gym
                       my father put together

                       Like a big sturdy
                       Tinkertoy.

                       I dig in the backyard sand
                       with a spoon.

                       Digging to China
                       my mother says.

                       the grown-ups talk about
                       Indo-China
                       where the fathers are now.

                       I dig harder.



                            2.   First Stitches

                       My beloved rocking horse
                       on springs, a bucking bronco.

                       Grandmother watching us
                       while mother joins father
                       in Japan, the carrier docked
                       for two weeks.

                       (What a strange thing is a war
                       that you can take a vacation from.)


                       I rear back into a brick
                       garden wall.

                       The warm blood, grandmother
                       frantic, the ether,
                       the black stitches
                       painless.
 


                        by Contributing Poet  Ann Quinn   Copyright © 2016 
                        VWP 2016     First published in  VietnamWarPoetry.com 
                        Bio:  Ann Quinn's  father was a Navy pilot in Vietnam, 1966-1968, with VA-94 off the USS Hancock.
                        She is a writer, teacher and clarinetist, living in Catonsville, MD, with her family.
                        She is working towards an M.F.A. in poetry with the Rainier Writing Workshop
                        at Pacific Lutheran University. She won first prize in the 2015 Bethesda Literary
                        Festival Poetry Contest, judged by Stanley Plumly & has been a Pushcart Prize nominee.
 ​
 

Except where otherwise attributed,  all pages & content herein
Copyright © 2014 - 2025    
Paul Hellweg     VietnamWarPoetry.com     All rights reserved
Westerly, Rhode Island, USA