Body Bags
I fucked the Vietnam War
in the wild misery of Alan's eyes. Maybe
he was already crazy – at eleven
saw his brother's hand torn off by a Harvester.
No relief in sex for him,
he couldn't come, but planted mines
of orgasm in me, watched 'em explode.
In his white Corvette, we cruised
the two-lanes of Carteret County, North Carolina:
an ex-Marine, a Jew from New York,
both of us feeding on the strange energy of our differences.
He'd grip the wheel and tell me
about throwing men out of helicopters,
how a crash had left him in constant pain.
After Thanksgiving, he disappeared
to Nicaragua, where it wasn't over.
All the rest of the year, I couldn’t
look at shopping bags.
They were printed with jungle-green,
massacre-red, held shrapnel
wrapped in tissue.
~
"I wrote about the Vietnam War because I was 13 in 1968 and went to rallies and marches against the war.
The War was the defining political event of those years."
by Contributing Poet Roberta Feins Copyright © 2016
VWP 2016 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
I fucked the Vietnam War
in the wild misery of Alan's eyes. Maybe
he was already crazy – at eleven
saw his brother's hand torn off by a Harvester.
No relief in sex for him,
he couldn't come, but planted mines
of orgasm in me, watched 'em explode.
In his white Corvette, we cruised
the two-lanes of Carteret County, North Carolina:
an ex-Marine, a Jew from New York,
both of us feeding on the strange energy of our differences.
He'd grip the wheel and tell me
about throwing men out of helicopters,
how a crash had left him in constant pain.
After Thanksgiving, he disappeared
to Nicaragua, where it wasn't over.
All the rest of the year, I couldn’t
look at shopping bags.
They were printed with jungle-green,
massacre-red, held shrapnel
wrapped in tissue.
~
"I wrote about the Vietnam War because I was 13 in 1968 and went to rallies and marches against the war.
The War was the defining political event of those years."
by Contributing Poet Roberta Feins Copyright © 2016
VWP 2016 First published in VietnamWarPoetry.com
Bio: Roberta Feins received her MFA in poetry in 2007 from New England College.
Her poems have been published in Five AM, Antioch Review, The Cortland Review
and The Gettysburg Review, among others.
Her chapbook Something Like a River, was published by Moon Path Press in 2013.
Roberta edits the e-zine Switched-OnGutenberg.org
Her poems have been published in Five AM, Antioch Review, The Cortland Review
and The Gettysburg Review, among others.
Her chapbook Something Like a River, was published by Moon Path Press in 2013.
Roberta edits the e-zine Switched-OnGutenberg.org
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