The World We Pretended Then


The summer of My Baby Does the Hanky-Panky
I baked to a sweet potato sheen watching
adolescent heads dip like bobbers in sun-spangled waves,
then pop to the surface to suck the jukebox filtered air,
translucent torsos flailing in a wild dervish dance
to the titillating lure of hanky and panky
financed on quarters pilfered from mothers’ purses.
 
My brother not so lucky a few summers earlier,
the summer of Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor
on the Bedpost Overnight, when one dipped
but didn’t bob—fisherman’s dream
lifeguard’s nightmare—and he dove into
the cool quarry depths to retrieve, then kiss
a young man’s cool blue lips…
 
as cool and blue
as the summer of I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,
I believe, when he pulled the ambulance into the drive
to grab a quick sandwich on the way to the mortuary
and asked if I wanted to see a dead guy— 
“Hey, Bob, do you want to see a dead guy?”
was what he said—which of course I did.
So he opened the vault-like Caddy door and
there he was, an old blue man
who once played golf with President Eisenhower
the obit later boasted.
 
                                    Fast forward
to the summer after Jim, Jimmie and Janice died:
highway tie-up on a mail run to Quang Tri,
crowd donning black silk pajamas and paddy hats
gathers around two young men and a young woman
stripped to the waist and pocked with small muddy-red holes
staring heavenward like sightless angels blinded
by the sun those British boys promised was coming.
 
We looked       we listened     
then retreated from the dirge of snot and tears
dripping onto a gurney of dirt
to retrieve
 
news from the World
we pretended then
meant home and melodies
that might save us all.

-first published in The Sacred Monotony of Breath (Prolific Press, 2015)
 


Bumper Sticker World


LEGALIZE FREEDOM
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS
I’D RATHER BE AT THE CABIN
 
It’s a FORD-TOUGH-in-your-face bumper sticker world.
 
Back in ’71, in The World
one day back from Viet Nam,
I visited the new mall
on the field where a few years earlier
I had honed my soldierly skills
sniping snowballs at passing cars
and watched a couple of young boys
throw coins into a fountain.
 
Are we the insurgents or their counters?
I asked myself. Depends on which side
of the watershed you’re falling,
I supposed.
 
I cried in the parking lot.
Not sure why.
Spilt milk?
Today, the malls are there when they leave,
there when they return.
 
There’s talk these days of making our new vets
our new GREATEST GENERATION.
A bumper sticker bonanza.
Seems not quite fair to my father
whose ship was sunk on D-Day
but if he were alive I don’t think
he’d give a shit. I don’t think
our new vets give a shit either.
 
But we who are born to the slogan
care. Put it on a ballot. Democracy in action— 
which is worth more:
DEAD KRAUT or DEAD TOWEL HEAD?
DEAD NIP or DEAD DUNE COON?
And don’t forget the GOOKS:
they taught us we must never be afraid
to surge again,
 
that the malls await our return,
drop a penny in the fountain,
uniform at our feet and go shopping,
maybe some North Woods cabinwear
to slip into when we slip out to
the water’s edge, stiff drink in hand,
and empty our pockets
listening to the loon’s lament.
 
-first published in The Sacred Monotony of Breath (Prolific Press, 2015)