Watching the News in Spain, Asking My Father About a Scar on His Arm Over Dinner, Some Pages from My Book of Pacifism
WATCHING THE NEWS IN SPAIN
A Basque bomb killed a family of six.
Their car was mangled,
looking like a silver raisin,
as if some giant hand had pinched
everything together. It was comical,
funny. What wasn't funny was the man
carrying a blue baby out of the smoking mess.
Its head was dusty, as if it had been
baptized in dirt. The man holding it
was crying, his face was muddy
where the tears and dirt became one.
He turned to the camera, as if to give me
the child, as if to give it to all
twelve of us monks in that room
watching television. That was when
the baby's head opened like a flower,
the sides of its face falling open like petals.
I noticed the cross on my neck
and how heavy it was,
how goddamned heavy.
ASKING MY FATHER ABOUT A SCAR ON HIS ARM OVER DINNER
He said it was like love,
all warmth and pressure
sweeping you off your feet
and into the brick of a wall.
In a daze, you know, in a fog
and the world is silence
except for this feeling,
and the smell of burning
coming from just below you,
from the crumpled edges of your fingers.
There are muffled somethings
that you find out later are screams
in English and Vietnamese
but it's all just this fog now.
But you still get up
and give things back,
open up your rifle
and give this steady thump of bullets,
because you can't see them,
can't hear them,
just give them fire
like it's from your heart.
SOME PAGES FROM MY BOOK OF PACIFISM
1.
The projects, in Los Angeles.
It was the mid seventies,
my mom tells me,
and Vietnam was still
hanging over everything.
They came after her first
seven gangsters pissed off
at a Chicana dating a white man.
My father, still gaunt from war,
planted knees in groins,
busted lips, cut one of them
with his own knife,
until someone smashed
a crowbar into his face,
spilling his teeth
onto the asphalt.
My mother remembers him
spitting blood at her,
screaming for her to run.
2.
My brother only saw me fight once.
He was three or four,
and I was picking him up
from pre-school.
It was in Santa Monica.
California.
2:45 p.m.
And this kid
I see is big, huge,
a black boy
biggest person
I could find
at the school,
his t-shirt
the dirty blue
of a gangster,
and he crumbles
they all do,
when the hook
is right,
just below the rib,
the liver,
holding his gut
like he's laughing,
this makes it easier
to guide his head
into the plaster
of the wall
smear him
until he is on the floor
bubbling blood
and I stomp
on his neck
his head
his hands
until he curls
pulls into his own body.
People are watching now,
gathered, and I know that
this has bought me a month
of distance from the gangs,
a month to let my knuckles heal.
I walk my brother home,
holding his hand,
knowing that rumors
will come now.
I've heard them before,
of the oreo milkshake,
the mean ass "guedo"
rumors of broken jaws
and finding teeth in bushes.
3.
It was a month or so,
after we started making love.
Cramped on the edges of a futon,
tangled in sheets and sweat,
she traced my body, found angles
and bone up to the cap of my elbow,
corded length of arm
and the scraped edges of a scar.
"What's this one?"
"Knife," I say, and she pauses,
everything pauses,
as if she expected me to answer
bicycle, or accident, or football
and for the first time,
the woman who will be my wife,
pulls away from me,
as if the blade is still there,
leaking blood onto her hands,
onto the sheets and bed.
Later that night, after
she thought I was asleep
I could feel the edges of her fingers
pushing against the flesh
of my scar, like she was putting
something back in place, back inside.
4.
My brother called today.
He's been training,
and he can't wait to get to Iraq.
He punctuates words with "hoorah",
asks me about video games
after telling me about firing
a 50-caliber rifle.
And when she comes home
I tell my wife all of this,
about Robert.
She leads me to the bedroom,
quietly helping me with my shirt,
unbuckling my pants.
Her touch is more careful now
and she knows what scars
she can touch,
and which to leave alone.
And it is moments like these,
in the silence of our room,
that I want to tell her
about my pacifism.
How it is more than this war,
than desert sands and peace
symbols scribbled on cardboard.
For me, it is about not driving
over to the marine recruiter
and smashing his face
until his teeth break
and fall like tears.
