Seeing You Off to Vietnam, 1970
For Dave
I never noticed the gate number
at the airport, the throngs,
the look of your carry-on
which is what we did all that week.
I glided down the escalator
as if in a dream
knowing you’d return,
just knowing.
On the drive home I listened
to The Midnight Train to Georgia,
the lights on the L.A. freeway beacons,
a streamline to my heart.
Still humming, “his world, my world our world,”
I opened my front door--
woke up my mother to say,
“I’ve met the man I know I’ll marry.”
by Contributing Poet Mary Langer Thompson Copyright © 2020
VWP 2020 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
~
Memories and Manicures
"You want color?" asks a young woman.
I choose a bright one from the severed
hand of a manikin.
She dons her mask
and attacks my old polish.
Red splinters fly,
and gone is the flower decal.
The cream's jar reads,
“Made in the USA from US
and foreign ingredients.”
I wonder--
did her mother or grandmother
escape from Saigon,
perhaps by boat?
She sprays each fingertip
and I feel the burn.
I hope the chemical compound isn’t toxic.
Marvin Gaye softly sings, What’s Going On.
All I know for sure is that my sailor came home to me.
Outside, feeling stylish,
I examine her handiwork.
Although I got what I asked for,
I hate the garish orange.
Guess I’ll have to live with it.
by Contributing Poet Mary Langer Thompson Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
'69 Karmann Ghia
You were always more than a Volkswagon.
You even looked like me from the rear,
my friend said the last time she saw me drive away.
When she died, I drove you on the boulevard
and we cruised back and forth, back and forth.
Another friend refused a ride because Hitler
had his picture taken with one of your kind.
She jumpstarted you politically, even though
you sputtered and gasped when asked to turn
on your headlights to protest the Vietnam War
because someone we loved was there.
Remember he followed us for an hour
in a Maverick, just for a kiss, before he left?
When I married him, you carried us
to Bob's Big Boy and drive-in movies.
Once I heard a noise and pulled over to raise the hood.
It was my belly with your future driver,
rubbing against the steering wheel.
He would someday paint you a brighter blue.
Remember when your side was bashed?
And there were a few tickets, probably because
you looked like you were going faster than you could.
You were the last to get on the moving van to Colorado
and didn't do too well in the snow--sliding into ditches
until we adorned you with four studded snow tires.
On the return drive to California, you were
a bed in Tuba City (never enough room to make love).
Finally a young man bought you, shipped you overseas
for restoration. I picture you enjoying the sights of Europe,
close to your original, currently peaceful, home.
by Contributing Poet Mary Langer Thompson Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
For Dave
I never noticed the gate number
at the airport, the throngs,
the look of your carry-on
which is what we did all that week.
I glided down the escalator
as if in a dream
knowing you’d return,
just knowing.
On the drive home I listened
to The Midnight Train to Georgia,
the lights on the L.A. freeway beacons,
a streamline to my heart.
Still humming, “his world, my world our world,”
I opened my front door--
woke up my mother to say,
“I’ve met the man I know I’ll marry.”
by Contributing Poet Mary Langer Thompson Copyright © 2020
VWP 2020 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
~
Memories and Manicures
"You want color?" asks a young woman.
I choose a bright one from the severed
hand of a manikin.
She dons her mask
and attacks my old polish.
Red splinters fly,
and gone is the flower decal.
The cream's jar reads,
“Made in the USA from US
and foreign ingredients.”
I wonder--
did her mother or grandmother
escape from Saigon,
perhaps by boat?
She sprays each fingertip
and I feel the burn.
I hope the chemical compound isn’t toxic.
Marvin Gaye softly sings, What’s Going On.
All I know for sure is that my sailor came home to me.
Outside, feeling stylish,
I examine her handiwork.
Although I got what I asked for,
I hate the garish orange.
Guess I’ll have to live with it.
by Contributing Poet Mary Langer Thompson Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
'69 Karmann Ghia
You were always more than a Volkswagon.
You even looked like me from the rear,
my friend said the last time she saw me drive away.
When she died, I drove you on the boulevard
and we cruised back and forth, back and forth.
Another friend refused a ride because Hitler
had his picture taken with one of your kind.
She jumpstarted you politically, even though
you sputtered and gasped when asked to turn
on your headlights to protest the Vietnam War
because someone we loved was there.
Remember he followed us for an hour
in a Maverick, just for a kiss, before he left?
When I married him, you carried us
to Bob's Big Boy and drive-in movies.
Once I heard a noise and pulled over to raise the hood.
It was my belly with your future driver,
rubbing against the steering wheel.
He would someday paint you a brighter blue.
Remember when your side was bashed?
And there were a few tickets, probably because
you looked like you were going faster than you could.
You were the last to get on the moving van to Colorado
and didn't do too well in the snow--sliding into ditches
until we adorned you with four studded snow tires.
On the return drive to California, you were
a bed in Tuba City (never enough room to make love).
Finally a young man bought you, shipped you overseas
for restoration. I picture you enjoying the sights of Europe,
close to your original, currently peaceful, home.
by Contributing Poet Mary Langer Thompson Copyright © 2015
VWP 2015 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Bio: Mary Langer Thompson's poems, short stories, and essays appear in various journals and anthologies. She is a contributor to two poetry writing texts, The Working Poet (Autumn Press, 2009) and Women and Poetry: Writing, Revising, Publishing and Teaching (McFarland, 2012), and was the 2012 Senior Poet Laureate of California. A retired school principal and former secondary English teacher, Langer Thompson received her Ed.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. Mary and Dave Thompson, who was a Corpsman in the Navy met a week before he was sent to Vietnam in 1970. They were married for 49 wonderful years. She continues to enjoy conducting writing workshops for schools, prisons, and in her community of the high desert of California.
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