WEBVTT

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In this last one, it's
hard for me to read.

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But I will because the
next war that touched me--

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literally and in a
bad way-- was Vietnam.

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Vietnam was raging when
I was a young teenager,

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and some of the boys coming back
all damaged where my neighbors,

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and later, some of the
people I went to school with.

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And so this is called "The
lesson of the tongue,"

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about this young man that lived
in the same building as I did.

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"The lesson of the tongue."

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It is the year of
rainstorms in the afternoon,

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and our neighbor's son has
been sent home from the jungle,

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still wearing camouflage and
wounded in some way we cannot

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see.

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He lies on his
mother's flowered sofa

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reading action comics all day,
ignoring her incessant pleas.

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In our kitchen, the women
are bending over the table,

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comparing the weight of their
crosses in measured voices

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when the first rule of thunder
prompts a command for me

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to shut the windows
down the hall,

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since he won't care
if it's flood or fire.

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Invisible on his
back in the dim room,

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his arm strikes
out like a scythe,

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felling me on top of him.

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Before a cry can
leave my throat,

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he crosses his thin
drawn lips with a finger

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as if we were about
to share a secret,

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and pulling my t-shirt up
over the buds of my breasts

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not yet warranting
support by anything more

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than my fervent wishes,
he covers one nipple

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with his mouth, changing me as
if by magic, making it round

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and hard as glass.

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I am held by the
spell of his tongue

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on my skin, poised for flight
like a marble that thumbs tip.

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Then a flash of light pries open
his eyes, and the yellow fire

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I see there sends me running
back to the mothers, who ask,

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what is wrong?

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But I cannot say what I feel,
and they tossed their knowing

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smiles over their coffee cups,
assuming that it was the storm

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raging outside that has
made me swallow my tongue.

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