March 2015
I teach American literature and creative writing at a small college in Iowa. I spent my teenage years in Washington, DC, socializing with the progeny of prominent Republicans. My first crush was on the daughter of former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. Stevens would of course become a liberal or, rather, the country would move so far to the Right that he would appear to become a liberal. I would become a radically imperfect socialist and writer, one who believes that political poetry can be as sensuous as any dew-soaked lyric. Please visit my website http://www.ralphsavarese.com
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Editors note: When I came across this poem in the Rattle archives, I knew I had to publish it. Thanks to the author for letting me reprint his exceptional work.
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Nor Yet a Dream of War
For Kevin, the former Defense Secretary’s son
We were sixth-graders at middle school camp,
conscripts in an old regime of the masculine,
privates third-class,
dreading the common shower,
the inevitable comparisons--
my own genital region like an unplanted field
far from a forest.
We didn’t much care for our unit,
especially the bigger boys, lords of the rise
they got out of you,
bullies snapping their towels,
giving someone a wedgie.
Two hours into the trip and you were miserable:
a sullen lump on the rope swing.
The second night, after the ghost stories
and guitar, after the game
of capture the flag,
after the Walton family imitations
(“Night, John Boy. Night, Mary Ellen”),
you showed up at my bed—unannounced,
shivering, distraught.
“I’m cold,” you whispered, tapping me
on the shoulder. “I’m cold.”
And I, drowsy with sleep,
thinking you were my baby sister
scared of a thunderstorm,
or not thinking at all, told you
to crawl in.
* * *
And that’s how, the next morning,
the gym teacher found us:
in the same zipped-up sleeping bag,
the same sweaty, blue cocoon of dreams.
Remember trying to scramble back to consciousness?
Suddenly, a voice loud enough to wake
the other boys:
“WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING?”
Like a street urchin flushed from an underground city,
you maneuvered through winding
passageways and inky, muck-filled sewers
to locate a manhole.
Then lifting the cumbersome lid,
you rose into shame—I right behind you.
* * *
Say we were two boys together clinging
(that’s how Whitman once put it),
two boys wrapped in goose-feather affection,
our skulls propped against one another
like pick-up sticks, sunlight
pouring into the musty cabin, splashing
on the walls—dawn once again at it
with her water canon.
All that muscle-crowned gym teacher
could talk about was sex
and a word (sodomy) we didn’t understand.
His fellow chaperone, the guidance counselor,
insisted on phoning our fathers.
“What they need is a good man-to-man.”
Yours was hysterical—let us say,
representatively so.
Three tears for the moderate Republican
from Maine, that toupee-ed paradox!
He saw the future as a carpet at last unrolled,
a red one ruined by moths.
So much for ever being President…
Mine, the corporate lawyer,
made a motion
to hold me in contempt.
* * *
Must a boy swim upstream for miles and then
like a salmon agreeably die?
What has become of you,
my disconsolate bedmate?
Are you able to follow the federal guidelines
on loneliness,
that preposterous compromise?
You can be lonely,
but you can’t tell anyone,
nor can anyone ask.
If I had to guess: you’re probably married now
with children,
an amiable enough, country-club sort
of citizen, a lobbyist or defense contractor
preaching the gospel of national security
while taking advantage of Pop’s
incomparable connections.
(The old man like a base-runner
stranded at third,
having made it to congressman, then senator,
then the loyal opposition’s
Pentagon head.)
* * *
Last night I saw your father,
the now former Secretary, on television.
He’s been hired as a commentator
for the upcoming war.
“Soon, a squadron of bombers will swoop down
over Baghdad,” he reported, “dropping
their loads, doing their dirty business
in the dark.” Well,
he didn’t say that exactly,
though his enthusiasm was nearly sexual.
America has begun its chant;
outside, even the cicadas are preparing
for combat, pounding their thoraxes.
In the first Gulf conflict,
pilots were given pornographic materials
as a motivational tool.
“Go out and give it to her,” the men joked
as they climbed up to their cockpits.
Then lifting the cumbersome lids,
they rose into shame--
the entire country behind them.
So many miles, so much distance.
Look, the dead crawl into their body bags
alone. Remember playing
beneath the streets? Remember the warmth
of my breath on your shoulder?
There wasn’t a girl between us
nor yet a dream of war.
-originally published in Rattle (Winter 2009, #32)
©2009 Ralph James Savarese