In this last one, it's hard for me to read.
But I will because the next war that touched me--
literally and in a bad way-- was Vietnam.
Vietnam was raging when I was a young teenager,
and some of the boys coming back all damaged where my neighbors,
and later, some of the people I went to school with.
And so this is called "The lesson of the tongue,"
about this young man that lived in the same building as I did.
"The lesson of the tongue."
It is the year of rainstorms in the afternoon,
and our neighbor's son has been sent home from the jungle,
still wearing camouflage and wounded in some way we cannot
see.
He lies on his mother's flowered sofa
reading action comics all day, ignoring her incessant pleas.
In our kitchen, the women are bending over the table,
comparing the weight of their crosses in measured voices
when the first rule of thunder prompts a command for me
to shut the windows down the hall,
since he won't care if it's flood or fire.
Invisible on his back in the dim room,
his arm strikes out like a scythe,
felling me on top of him.
Before a cry can leave my throat,
he crosses his thin drawn lips with a finger
as if we were about to share a secret,
and pulling my t-shirt up over the buds of my breasts
not yet warranting support by anything more
than my fervent wishes, he covers one nipple
with his mouth, changing me as if by magic, making it round
and hard as glass.
I am held by the spell of his tongue
on my skin, poised for flight like a marble that thumbs tip.
Then a flash of light pries open his eyes, and the yellow fire
I see there sends me running back to the mothers, who ask,
what is wrong?
But I cannot say what I feel, and they tossed their knowing
smiles over their coffee cups, assuming that it was the storm
raging outside that has made me swallow my tongue.