Portside

fifteen years of roadside bombs, there must be thousands of ’em! We’ll dress ’em in bright colors, the lost lefts we’ll do red, the lost rights we’ll do Air Force blue, we’ll fly ’em here, put ’em up a few nights—vouchers for drinks, that’s all it’ll take—they’ll march the half-step, we’ll goose-step ’em, left flank & right, and when they’re told to close ranks for the cameras, they’ll look whole again in the afternoon light and our nation can forget…
    Dressed in polished cotton, the soldiers came, did as they were told. Up the straight avenue they marched, young men, young women, slow but lockstep, televised, eyes raised, unwavering, arm in arm for support. 
    Then, as one, they fell, The Domino Effect come true, but not the way the generals had warned of it/been funded for it so long ago; there on that glorious day the one-legged warriors fell, men against women against men against men, arm in arm they went down in the clatter of prosthetics, the reds into the blues in one wave undulating down the avenue, the band on the bandstand antheming its martial pageantry of spring, cherry blossoms adrift in the April breeze.
    What about one-armed men, then, said the President. They can still salute, can’t they? Let’s make ’em salute. What about gurneys? Can we get guys on gurneys…

Gerald Fleming’s most recent book of prose poems is The Bastard and the Bishop (Hanging Loose Press, Brooklyn), He’s written various books for teachers, and recently edited The Collected Poetry and Prose of Lawrence Fixel. Fleming taught for thirty-seven years in the San Francisco Public Schools, and lives most of the year in the S.F. Bay Area.