THE VIETNAM WAR

God bless Diem, my friend at work whose voice is soft as bees
as she says she's going to write the University of Virginia
board of trustees for firing a woman president. I ask
if she went to UVA. She did. She’s smart as shit.
God bless the ghost of my six-year-old self waging dirt-clod battles
in the red-clay piney woods of Fort Bragg, North Carolina,
in 1965, trying to show my father's courage, who was off fighting guerillas
in the Asian jungles, which to my tender ears and brain
could only mean gorillas. I could see them screeching with bandoliers
and AK-47s, swinging fiercely through the trees. And God bless Tracy,
my ex-girlfriend who once asked me why so many Vietnamese
live in DC, whose big blue eyes widened when I recounted
how entire families would cling to rafts no bigger than sleds
and fight off sharks and pirates to reach our golden shores,
then hang a right and make their way through the Panama Canal,
up the whole East Coast, past Belize and Holden Beach,
until they found the blue Potomac, drifting past Mount Vernon
and George's grave, and his slave's graves too, and his wooden teeth.
Really, she said? God yes, I answered, squeezing her lovely hand,
right before she kicked me hard in my bony shin.
“Shin” is Diem’s last name. I don’t know what it means.