Sample Poems by Jim Fairhall
Reconnaissance
They were the first ones I had seen so dead,
their smell so rich, so rank that all the way
I trembled with a dog's dumb giddy dread.
Their skin was like jello or milk-soaked bread,
and under white maggots was gray, fish-gray.
They were the first ones I had seen so dead.
--C'mon, let's do our search, the LT said.
I wanted to pray, or maybe just bay.
I trembled with a dog's dumb giddy dread.
Rifles, canteens, canvas pouches--crusted
swamp-green--lay strewn like toys from ancient play.
They were the first ones I had seen so dead.
They were between: marsh mush and yet kindred,
brothers. Through the green gloom shot one stark ray.
I trembled with a dog's dumb giddy dread.
We flung on mud, splashing ourselves, then fled.
All night on clothes--on me--I sniffed that spray.
They were the first ones I had seen so dead.
I trembled with a dog's dumb giddy dread.
Mitch
A short slim 18-year-old swirl of energy,
he laughed and rapped
as if the Nam were a joke,
especially on honkies:
--Hey listen man.
You think you know about the Man?
Try bein' black in Plaquemines Parish.
He sang a tenor's lilt:
--A-a-ma-zing-g Graaace,
How-w sweeeet the sound . . .
But what he liked most
was Motown's sound,
a not-so-sweet,
quick-witted, sharp, percussing Soul:
--People movin' out, people movin' in,
why do they judge you by the color of your skin?
Run, run, run, but you still can't hide.
He had as many sayings as the Army.
For playing cards:
--Cut 'em thin 'n win.
For cutting through the hush
as far away the beat
of a retreating medevac strains,
fades like a last, harsh breath:
--The Lo'd call you,
you been 'n had
your say-so in the world.
He didn't talk about the war,
which was the Man's, not his,
except to say
that thanks to Communist aggression,
he'd gotten out of Plaquemines Parish,
and damned if he'd go back
and wear the white starched hat
of an apprentice baker:
--Fuck that shit, man.
Once Pharaoh's army set him free,
there was a world to see.
At first I was the enemy--
a skinny blond,
who more than music grooved on books.
Later, we became wary friends.
He was the better soldier,
but endless humping in the bush,
and elsewhere endless Mickey Mouse,
played off-key on his nerves.
We landed, on Beeham,
in a red erupting sea.
In splashing, sucking mud,
we were stringing wire
when he slammed his bale down
and told some pale brownbar where to go.
He was the one who went.
Later:
--Got busted by the Man.
They think I be a baaad black cat.
He went on sick call then,
hung out with homies in the rear,
gave the dap,
and braided a Black Power bracelet.
After Top shipped him back to us,
he started looking trapped again,
until one day--exuberant--
he said, I'se outta here!
I done re-up for Eagle Beach.
That lifer motherfucker Top
can kiss my butt 'cause I am gone.
None of us heard from him.
We humped the boonies hard.
Between the rain and jungle rot
and one guy shot smack in the butt
while crouched to take a shit,
re-upping for three years
seemed a fair price--
almost--for clean fatigues and showers,
pizzas and frostbite beers . . .
all the bright lures
of a gig in the safe far rear.
One day, among black stumps
and broken-finger trunks
of a demolished hilltop,
we crouched in clotted mud.
A resupply bird blew debris,
lowering itself gingerly.
Besides the ammo, Cs and mail,
it disgorged Mitch.
He staggered under his chock-full pack
and hunkered next to me.
I asked him, What the fuck?
He said, watching the chopper's wake
beneath black pearly cloud-rack,
the LT at the beach
had caught him, on his birthday night,
crashed drunk on guard.
--You signed up for three years, I said.
How can he send you back?
--That's what the Man can do, Mitch snapped.
Don't you know nothin'?