The Approximate Wall
Rubbings
Kathleen Hellen

1.
On a lawn chair with a Coke he plots
trajectories; villages he never sees
until the smoke lifts,
the jungle disappears in urgent orange;

in December he flies home;
his sin: he couldn’t win;
dreams of off-shore gun boats aimed
at darkness;

snow is lightly
falling in Charleston, West Virginia;
he shivers in his summer whites,
a captain’s uniform.


2.
Bunkered at the Waffle House;
the war without relief, relived
in cigarettes;
the things he can’t

forget: the slant-eyed girl
who blacked his boots for tips;
he wants to take her home with him
home to the States;
 
but there’s a husband, so he thinks:
others like her,
thousands like them, him:
working sleeping hungry weeping;

scared shitless;
funny, how his hand shakes;
how the match exacts resemblance;
a pack of smokes: ammo.


3.
He separates the dead from those he knows
are dying;
counts the tags, body bags;
counts the days until he’s shipped back

to the States: two-hundred-fifty-five ---
his mind divides; triage
of the venial, mortal, crimes
unspeakable

jungled in his eyes;
the fear, the fear trap-
sprung; a tiger
in the syndrome

on a rooftop in D.C.
the yakety-yak trajectory;
the crosshairs of the moon
sneaking up through the trees.

He separates the dead from those he knows
don’t count
tags, body bags.

* * * * *

Kathleen Hellen's work has appeared in Nimrod International; Poetry International; Prairie Schooner; Runes; and Southern Poetry Review. Awards include the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred; the Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council; and the James Still Award for Poetry.

* * * * *


Back to Table of Contents, Fall 2006, IN OUR OWN WORDS

Back to BB Publications Home