Pieta
Veronica Golos
War Poetry Contest 2009 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention
Beauty...is the extra that keeps creation in motion.
—Brenda Hillman
What of that farm mother, her soldier son, shattered
into unrecognized form; she hides her shuddering inside the closet, rubs the coat
and boots he'll never need again—his body of cut-off-stems—
Before, in his childlife sleep, his legs flung open, all fragrant and pure and lush
sometimes she couldn't even look he was so beautiful although she didn't have then,
and doesn't have now, the word
Beauty...
She's speared through—
she can no longer bend, no that is impossible, every gesture must be, and he, must be, that
smell in his room, his blind left eye, the three limbs sawed away, his shit staining
the white sheets,
the Wal-Mart sheets, she buys and buys, her only time away, buys them because she can't
clean the white that flows out of them, their stains more than stained, you see he had
been so crisp, so cut-line, so formal in the uniform, as if he had been pressed somehow
inside &
her with her deep knowledge of ironing, of pressing herself, had recognized it in him, you
know, and saw beauty in it, yes, in the sharp crease, it was clean and clear, that work
of hands and then too, what message that beauty carried, that someone had done this for him.
Beauty...
She rolls him on his side, and removes, four times daily
the sheets from his bed, daily, brushes her fingers against his white tee shirt lightly (its
short arms flap, there is nothing to hold) with her thick fingers, lightly, finding muscle
there in his still-strong-back, the back of his head, that little scar from the day he fell off
the tractor when she thought yes I could kill I could kill his father, yes for this, oh—
Her memory is a sharpened thing, and it hurts her but she, as she has done all her life,
does not turn away, no she holds to, holds to, close to her small breasts, her bones hard
and coarse, the rub of herself gone. Was she ever beauty for all of it?
Skin, the most beautiful organ of the body; his tattoo...his arm. She holds to,
but questions slip inside her, little black hooks; she crawls
into the closet now, crouches
on the floor, all dark, and the hook pierces,
where where are his arms and his leg?
Do they burn them, they must, she thinks,
like we burn the land prior to the planting, only
nothing will grow back here will it, nothing will return, I mean it is gone gone gone, she
thinks hold to, you must hold to, inside this space inside this dark, her knees to her chin,
she rocks and does not scream no does not scream, and that stretch of Not in her—is
beauty too—isn't it, isn't it?
Beauty...
She wants to lift him she wants to smother him. She wants to finger all the edges
of his wounds she wants him back she wants him to die. All her words, the ones
she could say on some spring day, simple lovely words, the sun's out, the rye is up,
those small words are stuck somewhere below the solar plexus of her, something is
happening to her she is being squeezed of all words those beauty words sun grass wheat
horse earth gone only he remains in her
