Janet Buck

Just-ice

We all grew up on G.I. Joe.
Gospel hope was underlined
by uniforms in willing green.
Touching down from Vietnam--
a sandblast same as battle zones
with air-sick bags across your lap.
So young to weather scraps of men
in piles of doom like
stir-fry scooped on beds of rice.
Huts and homesteads bombed and flicked--
just ashes from a cigarette.
Courage was the currency.
We stuffed your pockets with our need--
ordered death like mincemeat pie.

The judgment tomes that hit the air
were wet grenades and pressure valves
on pots of stew you didn’t cook.
Because you went, you wore blame
on covers of a magazine,
gave your Purple Heart away,
shredded Newsweek in your head.
Our patriotic tetanus shots
belonged in slabs of open wounds
of men like you who signed their names
on corners of a chopping block.

Felt the sweat of protest’s heat
in socks that should have been
safe harbors of a baseball glove.
Army boots like penny jars
that held the toes of misspent youth.
The hooting owl freedom calls--
a beeper in a doctor’s car.
War limps madly among the weeds
and cattails of a muzzled gun:
like marble for the just-ice cause
of something we treasure
but cannot spell and always lose--
guppies in the mouths of whales--
of raw and ripping rifle fire.

Bones and Borders

Yugoslavia: 1942.
A villa with its roses shot
like babies still in diaper shrouds.
Ice baths of a river’s colon
could not stop the stand you swam.
Treading water in the Nile
with alligator penniless.
Your servants felled by rifle fire--
broken candles, bowling pins.
In the "land of the free"
you were pocket change,
but courage was your coat of arms.
Every gift you made or chose
had history woven it its seams.

You traded wealth for justice clouds.
Crossed the border in the night.
Sipping poor was broken glass.
Exchanging bricks for raw, raw clay.
The dribble of a legend flounders
held in hands you crossed for "right".
Broken English on your tongue;
a heart intact in every way.
The vigil was embracing life--
you cupped its cheeks and held it close.
The "wrong" is how you suffered cold
from those who thought themselves above.
A Yugoslav--a dignitary in your land.
Here, you were a mailman
who brought the need for freedom home.


Previously Published in Open Mic January 1999.

Janet Buck teaches writing and literature at the college level. Her poetry, humor, and essays have appeared in The Pittsburgh Quarterly, The Melic Review, Sapphire Magazine, Recursive Angel, Southern Ocean Review, Lynx: Poetry from Bath, Apples & Oranges, Oranges & Apples, The Rose & Thorn, Mind Fire, The Astrophysicist’s Tango Partner Speaks, Perihelion, Oracle, Poetry Motel, Feminista!, Calliope, The Beaded Strand, 2River View, Kimera, Free Cuisinart, In Motion, Athens City Times, Conspire, Idling, remark, BeeHive, Gravity, A Writer’s Choice, Niederngasse, Shades of December, Maelstrom, and hundreds of print journals and e-zines world-wide. "On the page," she says, "is where a letter drops to its knees. Catharsis, consciousness, and insight are braided threads of a trinity, a broomstick which encourages others to swat convoluted cobwebs in attics of their own lives. Writing is a private scream with a universal echo that emerges from humble accordions of inner-need."