Before She Killed Her Husband
 
          He never let her  drive.  She never learned
          To write a check.  Yoked to home, she swept
          The floors and shared his bed and rarely wept.
          But inside, where he could not see, she burned.
          He held the reins and kept her harness tight,
          But as her daughter grew, she smelled his lies.
          She saw the way he looked at her:  his eyes
          Would follow her, undress her in the night.
          Each evening when he left her bed, she cried
          And burrowed deep within her sheets.  Held tight
          By mental traces much too strong to fight,
          She took the bit between her teeth and tried
          But could not move.  She woke and cooked his meal
          And tried each day to learn how not to feel.


          Buddha for Son

          I walked two klicks down Le Loi Street
          to a schoolyard, a Buddha broken in the dust
          shattered by a rocket meant for us,
          and saw you sitting in his hand
          tossing carved pieces of the statue's feet,
          not even caring where they'd land.

          What mattered was that I did not want to be
          where and what I was and saw
          that you had also had no choice. Some law,
          legal in my case, chance in yours,
          with no way out that you or I could see,
          gave me a twelve month, you a lifetime, tour.

          We shared a cigarette and watched the smoke
          rise into the red dust Pleiku air.
          You laughed, blew smoke rings with the flair
          that comes only when you're very young,
          and told me I was on the Buddha's throat
          and should beware the Buddha's tongue.

          I remember that once, when the war was calm,
          we laughed and played with shattered stones,
          and know there can be no way to atone
          for all the death, the wounds, the pain.
          If you still live, sleep quietly in father Buddha's palm;
          if not, sleep peacefully with all the slain.

          - palmer