On the many casualties of war. Dedicated to my Dad, William T. Howard III, who returned alive - mostly.
The Korean Memorial Wall bears faces
floating in and out of view
like survivors often do.
My husband, born in 1949,
calls himself a survivor of Korea.
Wes was one the day his daddy came back from war;
the first day of the child’s four-month coma;
the day the Other Wes was born,
the Hawaiian brother in the same skin
who holds all the memories that could kill you.
The child of his loins
and the child of his violence —
are their faces floating in that wall?
Is his? The father who was killed;
the one who would have held his infant son
and laughed?
Every bullet takes a part of you away.
I grew up with five scars in Daddy’s back,
like craters rimmed with debris
from the splash of a meteor.
Holes in history.
So many things unseen
on the floor of craters; unheard:
that what’s in Daddy’s coffee cup isn’t coffee;
what you wanted Daddy to say, that he never did;
what Daddy said that you didn’t want him to say.
Where in the wall
is the face left behind at Chosin Reservoir?
Where is mine?
The Korean Memorial Wall bears faces
and not enough names.