A Literary Journal of Critical Thinking
In the Samizdat Tradition of Writing against the Machine
A Forum for Examining the Dark Side of the Academic/Literary Industrial Complex

Thomas L. Wiseman

U.S. Military Holds Prom Night in the Jungle 1967

While we eat pieces of half-cooked snake,

we tilt our heads back drinking the brown rain.

OUT fatigues stink like fish gone bad.

A buddy's hand hauls out a face in paper,

Embedded in plastic like a bee in amber.

His scratched fingers curl like a claw,

straining to hold the photo up to us.

I lift a crawler from his cheek, and see

it has left a mark like smeared lipstick.

He holds the picture up like a tissue.

We gaze through green and black faces,

our lips caked and dry with scabs.

We feel only insect bites and soggy feet,

and ammo belts wearing hair from our chests.

Her cheeks are white as snow above smiling red lips.

Her bangs drop neatly to just above clear blue eyes;

the grimy rain taps nervously on her white teeth.

He licks his lips, mumbles her name like an apology

and slides the photo back under his poncho.

We gaze again at our wet stick fire

where steam weeps from soggy boots

hung across an old claymore wire;

and in wordless dusk we check our watches,

Each dumbly trying to recall the world she lives in.