Home to See My Brother
Francis, you, all unanswered questions, look like a poem to me.
Driving west and startled by
the measure of sky--
the telephone lines beaded with dark birds.
The landscape rolls over, exposes
shelves of stone, uncut pasture grasses.
During military leaves and Vietnam
we drank Texas Rum and Coke
at the Red Onion on Broadway. Sat outside
on the curb and sang, If it takes forever….
In high school, you painted Help in white paint
on the roof
outside your bedroom window.
You entered the Christian Brothers after graduation.
Logan Crosky, Kansas City’s chief of police
called mama to be sure you were gone.
Francis, you, all unanswered questions look like a poem to me.
In the convalescent center a woman
in the hallway cries because she can’t find her room.
The nurse pours fluids into a rubber tube
in your belly and we hold hands (yours unfamiliar
in this institutional light)
and sing the only song we know.
At the window a cloud of birds lifts as one--
held together by its own surface tension--
an unseen and elementary binding of one
small dark bird to another.
My brother, war-ruined 40 years ago, is dying and I wonder:
What is it about the winter grass that breaks the heart?
by Contributing Poet Mary Hennessy (Mary Anson) Copyright © 2013
VWP 2020 Finalist Poet Laureate Award 2013 & First Place NCSU 2015 $500.00 prize
1967: Brooke Army Medical Center
Wagner and chopper blades
in the apocalypse by Coppola--
the Second Coming and it aint’t Jesus.
In another version, Janis Joplin throws back
a long swallow of Southern Comfort
and hums the chorus of Bobby McGee
while round-eyed women move,
as if underwater,
in the dreams of leftover boys.
Around the dressing cart,
a quartet of the wounded, silly and raucous with relief--
the dirt of Southeast Asia still between their toes,
sings along with Grace Slick:
Don’t you want somebody to love?
The nurse, perfume in the hem of her uniform,
and assigned to dressings for the duration,
tears tape and shifts packages of sterile gauze.
Flying overhead, chopper pilots ride manhole covers--
jury-rigged beneath them, as armor
for the underbelly of the bird
and drop boys from Nebraska and the neighborhood
into the story-high poinsettias of San Antonio.
Stateside--
who could have believed it—?
Near the quadrangle,
in the orthopedic and amputee wards,
a wound in every bed--
those who can--
race wheelchairs down hospital ramps at speeds
no longer possible on foot and hitch
rides downtown in their blue convalescent pajamas,
where in bars decorated with Christmas lights in March,
older men, with limbs still attached,
talk Texas
and buy them drinks,
until the MPs pick them up by the scruffs of their necks,
like so many half-drowned kittens
and bring them back to the ward.
Lieutenant, are these yours?
Those who cannot--
eat pizza from the wagon that moves
through the ward like the seasons
and in that claustrophobic space stockpile pain
pills for a boy from Louisiana
who will need them.
From beds, strung with aluminum chains
of the flip tops from empty beer cans,
other patients, lined up like children in a pew on Sunday morning,
negotiate the business of love with whores
and flirt with nurses--
the women
who work the floor in metered waves.
Hey lieutenant, want to feel my new leg?
A boy from Carolina--
really, they were just boys--
after two tours as a medic,
without pleasure in the ramp races or the women,
tries to hurl himself through the 4th floor window.
He cannot see the bars.
The wardmaster, an ex-middleweight from Chicago,
carries the boy away.
A 70-year-old Red Cross volunteer--
near that same window and slowed by the memory--
moves like the young women in their dreams.
She holds a clutch of mail for bedside delivery in one hand
and offers of matrimony in the other--
her would-be-lovers, boys the age of her grandchildren.
Later that day, the Green Bay Packers win the Super Bowl
and Silver Stars and Purple Hearts,
out of their red plush boxes,
whirl between the orthopedic-framed beds
like chopper blades or comets,
bright and brief.
by Contributing Poet Mary Hennessy (Mary Anson) Copyright © 2005
VWP 2020 First published in the Coal City Review 2005 & nominated for a Pushcart Prize
Also published in the INDY, won 3rd place & was included in its entirety in the play Deployed
Francis, you, all unanswered questions, look like a poem to me.
Driving west and startled by
the measure of sky--
the telephone lines beaded with dark birds.
The landscape rolls over, exposes
shelves of stone, uncut pasture grasses.
During military leaves and Vietnam
we drank Texas Rum and Coke
at the Red Onion on Broadway. Sat outside
on the curb and sang, If it takes forever….
In high school, you painted Help in white paint
on the roof
outside your bedroom window.
You entered the Christian Brothers after graduation.
Logan Crosky, Kansas City’s chief of police
called mama to be sure you were gone.
Francis, you, all unanswered questions look like a poem to me.
In the convalescent center a woman
in the hallway cries because she can’t find her room.
The nurse pours fluids into a rubber tube
in your belly and we hold hands (yours unfamiliar
in this institutional light)
and sing the only song we know.
At the window a cloud of birds lifts as one--
held together by its own surface tension--
an unseen and elementary binding of one
small dark bird to another.
My brother, war-ruined 40 years ago, is dying and I wonder:
What is it about the winter grass that breaks the heart?
by Contributing Poet Mary Hennessy (Mary Anson) Copyright © 2013
VWP 2020 Finalist Poet Laureate Award 2013 & First Place NCSU 2015 $500.00 prize
1967: Brooke Army Medical Center
Wagner and chopper blades
in the apocalypse by Coppola--
the Second Coming and it aint’t Jesus.
In another version, Janis Joplin throws back
a long swallow of Southern Comfort
and hums the chorus of Bobby McGee
while round-eyed women move,
as if underwater,
in the dreams of leftover boys.
Around the dressing cart,
a quartet of the wounded, silly and raucous with relief--
the dirt of Southeast Asia still between their toes,
sings along with Grace Slick:
Don’t you want somebody to love?
The nurse, perfume in the hem of her uniform,
and assigned to dressings for the duration,
tears tape and shifts packages of sterile gauze.
Flying overhead, chopper pilots ride manhole covers--
jury-rigged beneath them, as armor
for the underbelly of the bird
and drop boys from Nebraska and the neighborhood
into the story-high poinsettias of San Antonio.
Stateside--
who could have believed it—?
Near the quadrangle,
in the orthopedic and amputee wards,
a wound in every bed--
those who can--
race wheelchairs down hospital ramps at speeds
no longer possible on foot and hitch
rides downtown in their blue convalescent pajamas,
where in bars decorated with Christmas lights in March,
older men, with limbs still attached,
talk Texas
and buy them drinks,
until the MPs pick them up by the scruffs of their necks,
like so many half-drowned kittens
and bring them back to the ward.
Lieutenant, are these yours?
Those who cannot--
eat pizza from the wagon that moves
through the ward like the seasons
and in that claustrophobic space stockpile pain
pills for a boy from Louisiana
who will need them.
From beds, strung with aluminum chains
of the flip tops from empty beer cans,
other patients, lined up like children in a pew on Sunday morning,
negotiate the business of love with whores
and flirt with nurses--
the women
who work the floor in metered waves.
Hey lieutenant, want to feel my new leg?
A boy from Carolina--
really, they were just boys--
after two tours as a medic,
without pleasure in the ramp races or the women,
tries to hurl himself through the 4th floor window.
He cannot see the bars.
The wardmaster, an ex-middleweight from Chicago,
carries the boy away.
A 70-year-old Red Cross volunteer--
near that same window and slowed by the memory--
moves like the young women in their dreams.
She holds a clutch of mail for bedside delivery in one hand
and offers of matrimony in the other--
her would-be-lovers, boys the age of her grandchildren.
Later that day, the Green Bay Packers win the Super Bowl
and Silver Stars and Purple Hearts,
out of their red plush boxes,
whirl between the orthopedic-framed beds
like chopper blades or comets,
bright and brief.
by Contributing Poet Mary Hennessy (Mary Anson) Copyright © 2005
VWP 2020 First published in the Coal City Review 2005 & nominated for a Pushcart Prize
Also published in the INDY, won 3rd place & was included in its entirety in the play Deployed
Bio: Mary Hennessy (Mary Anson), a nurse most of her adult life, returned to school late
& fell in with a community of generous, word-crazed people.
Her poems have appeared in many journals & anthologies.
One was nominated for a Pushcart Prize & included in the play Deployed.
One rode the R-bus line in Raleigh. In 2020, she was the recipient of the Pat Herold Nielsen Prize.
Mary is the Poetry Editor of this VietnamWarPoetry.com website.
For more info, please see her bio on the About Us page.
& fell in with a community of generous, word-crazed people.
Her poems have appeared in many journals & anthologies.
One was nominated for a Pushcart Prize & included in the play Deployed.
One rode the R-bus line in Raleigh. In 2020, she was the recipient of the Pat Herold Nielsen Prize.
Mary is the Poetry Editor of this VietnamWarPoetry.com website.
For more info, please see her bio on the About Us page.
.
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Westerly, Rhode Island, USA