Neon Vernacular. Yusef Komunyakaa

The Falling-Down Song 106

       The Thorn Merchant’s Son 107

       I Apologize 108

       1984 109

       Dreambook Bestiary 113

       Jonestown: More Eyes for Jadwiga’s Dream 115

       Landscape for the Disappeared 116

       Good Joe 118

       In the Background of Silence 120

       For the Walking Dead 121

       Child’s Play 122

       The Beast & Burden: Seven Improvisations 123

       from Toys in a Field

       Ambush 129

       Monsoon Season 130

       Water Buffalo 131

       Le Xuan, Beautiful Spring 132

       Please 133

       from Dien Cai Dau

       Camouflaging the Chimera 137

       Tunnels 138

       Starlight Scope Myopia 139

       Hanoi Hannah 141

       “You and I Are Disappearing” 142

       Re-creating the Scene 143

       We Never Know 145

       A Break from the Bush 146

       Tu Do Street 147

       Communiqué 148

       Prisoners 150

       Jungle Surrender 152

       Thanks 154

       To Have Danced with Death 155

       Report from the Skull’s Diorama 156

       Boat People 157

       Missing in Action 158

       Facing It 159

       from February in Sydney

       The Plea 163

       The Man Who Carries the Desert Around Inside Himself: For Wally 165

       Rocks Push 167

       When Loneliness Is A Man 169

       A Quality of Light 170

       Gerry’s Jazz 171

       Boxing Day 173

       Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage 175

       Blue Light Lounge Sutra for the Performance Poets at Harold Park Hotel 176

       February in Sydney 178

Fog Galleon

      Horse-headed clouds, flags

      & pennants tied to black

      Smokestacks in swamp mist.

      From the quick green calm

      Some nocturnal bird calls

      Ship ahoy, ship ahoy!

      I press against the taxicab

      Window. I’m back here, interfaced

      With a dead phosphorescence;

      The whole town smells

      Like the world’s oldest anger.

      Scabrous residue hunkers down under

      Sulfur & dioxide, waiting

      For sunrise, like cargo

      On a phantom ship outside Gaul.

      Cool glass against my cheek

      Pulls me from the black schooner

      On a timeless sea—everything

      Dwarfed beneath the papermill

      Lights blinking behind the cloudy

      Commerce of wheels, of chemicals

      That turn workers into pulp

      When they fall into vats

      Of steamy serenity.

At the Screen Door

      Just before sunlight

      Burns off morning fog.

      Is it her, will she know

      What I’ve seen & done,

      How my boots leave little grave-stone

      Shapes in the wet dirt,

      That I’m no longer light

      On my feet, there’s a rock

      In my belly? It weighs

      As much as the story

      Paul told me, moving ahead

      Like it knows my heart.

      Is this the same story

      That sent him to a padded cell?

      After all the men he’d killed in Korea

      & on his first tour in Vietnam,

      Someone tracked him down.

      The Spec 4 he ordered

      Into a tunnel in Cu Chi

      Now waited for him behind

      The screen door, a sunset

      In his eyes, a dead man

      Wearing his teenage son’s face.

      The scream that leaped

      Out of Paul’s mouth

      Wasn’t his, not this decorated

      Hero. The figure standing there

      Wasn’t his son. Who is it

      Waiting for me, a tall shadow

      Unlit in the doorway, no more

      Than an outline of the past?

      I drop the duffle bag

      & run before I know it,

      Running toward her, the only one

      I couldn’t have surprised,

      Who’d be here at daybreak

      Watching a new day stumble

      Through a whiplash of grass

      Like a man drunk on the rage

      Of being alive.

Moonshine

      Drunken laughter escapes

      Behind the fence woven

      With honeysuckle, up to where

      I stand. Daddy’s running-buddy,

      Carson, is beside