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Contests : War Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2010 : Boman Desai
THE BRIGHT WHITE SKY
1
Behind him the sky was a vault of magnesium
lit by the explosion somersaulting him into the air
throwing him on his stomach, rattling his bones
In the bright white sky a skeleton in GI regalia grew from a black dot to a silhouette
in silver
limbs windmilling, white as bone
recalling a picture he had seen in a library book
a skeleton caught in a war dance to a tune it played with drumsticks on its ribcage
In the light of such obscene brightness, life appeared more naked than it was, bones
showed through skin
and he saw over his shoulder, as if he were only an eye (multifaceted, insect), spewing
from the distant hooch in the ville, GI skeletons converging upon him
unerringly, symmetrically, kaleidoscopically
like iron filings to a magnetic core
He clung once more to the earth, hiding his face in the ground, spreadeagled, until
something bounced off his back, something like a sack of sand
In the celestial silence following the explosion, he rolled onto his back, waggling his
hands before his face, reassuring himself they were his, not phantom hands
The smell of pork roasting focused his senses and he raised himself from his back
first on his elbows
then his hands
his left deflecting the charred torso of a baby
turning him numb where it had bounced off his back
2
He jumped to his feet, running blind, stumbling into a ditch, and would have run on
but for something clinging to the sole of his jungle boot
four barbed iron spikes, four inches long
He thought of animals who bit through their legs to escape traps
of Christ who had given his life for Mankind
and stamped his foot savagely
until the spikes pierced the protective mesh of his boot, the sole of his foot
His senses ran once more amuck
keening cries for a medic
ammoniac smell of piss
sulphurous smell of shit
chuckachuckachucka of a chopper
its downdraft enveloping him like a cavern of cool air
people hovering like Redwoods
lifting him, flying him
into blackness
and again into light
floating him on ballbearings
into a room with naked bulbs and ceiling fans
3
In his hospital bed, tiny hammers beat his white bandaged foot
A Vietnamese nurse in a white cap told him he had been fortunate
Punji sticks were treated often with toxic plants, rotting meat, shit
Even minor wounds became infected
but he had escaped with
just flesh wounds
This poem was a finalist in the 2010 War Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Boman Desai
Boman Desai grew up in Bombay (now Mumbai), but has lived his adult life mostly in Chicago. After studying Architecture and Philosophy, and getting degrees in Psychology and English, he was set to become a market analyst when a chance encounter with Sir Edmund Hillary, his earliest hero (who had an office two floors above his own), brought him back to his vocation: writing. He took a number of part-time jobs ranging from bartending to teaching to find time to write. He got his first break when an elegant elderly woman personally submitted a number of his stories to the editor-in-chief of Debonair (a Bombay publication). The stories were all published, but the woman disappeared, and her identity remains a mystery to this day. He has since published stories, articles, and novels in the US, UK, and India. He won an Illinois Arts Council Award, the Stand Magazine prize for fiction (an international competition), and the Dana Award for novels. He has taught at Truman College, Roosevelt University, and is currently on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. Among other things, he is a Brahms scholar and an amateur musician.
Photo Credit: Adam Birt
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