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Missing in Action
- Wesleyan University Press
- Chapter
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Missing in Action Men start digging in the ground, propping shadows against trees outside Hanoi, but there aren't enough bones for a hash pipe. After they carve new names into polished black stone, we throw dust to the wind & turn faces to blank walls. Names we sing in sleep & anger cling to willows like river mist. We splice voices on tapes but we can't make one man walk the earth again. Not a single song comes alive in the ring of broken teeth on the ground. Sunlight presses down for an answer. But nothing can make that C-i3o over Hanoi come out of its spin, spiraling like a flare in green sky. After the flag's folded, the living fall into each other's arms. They've left spaces trees can't completely fill. Pumping breath down tunnels won't help us bring ghosts across the sea. Peasants outside Pakse City insist the wildflowers have changed colors. 59 They're what the wind & rain have taken back, what love couldn't recapture. Now less than a silhouette grown into the parrot perch, this one died looking up at the sky. 60 ...