......................... I don't know how we were not of a generation // war // it was spinning out around us
......................... I remember being sent to the basement always children's place bulletfull and Army //
......................... we'd dress up the camo flaks -thick enough to cover // down by the river the boys played
......................... Army wore the clothes thick enough you could hit BB gun what did we know of war
......................... we knew to go below when he came drunk I guess crazy the schizophrenia emerged
......................... bull-like from his head Viet Cong Viet Cong I don't know where he has stationed and
......................... admit to still can't find the voice to ask a question
.................................... my father
......................... he was his friend
.................................... one to talk to
................................................ cos no one else
......................... but we the children sent below and so the way to piece this would have been AFTER
......................... overhear listen in all the sly skills of women little girls
......................... listen in .......... listen up
......................... would have been how we
......................... knew he's crazy
......................... Viet Nam and Viet Nam and
......................... Viet Nam
......................... cos what Joe told him
......................... And now--today--I walk this campus where sometimes teach--I walk a ghost--no one
......................... knows it is me--this is how it is
......................... "Miss Sprague! Where are you at?" Sam a student last year once called me
......................... but today today Viet Nam
......................... I hear the language in the city of Westminster the students talk--a tonal
......................... And do they walk ghosts too of something left and I thought of you and Viet Nam Viet
......................... Nam they told us later we ate paper newspaper what did we know babies eat those words
......................... to mush a wet kind of gut maché and did it stick in my craw celiac duodenum I don't
......................... know now how we care not
......................... "I'm afraid not!""I'm afraid not!" what's edit out of news cos these days when it's only
......................... facts (no picture embed--that--no coffin no flag) and when a cheap trick Law & Order
......................... send me to tears last night manipulated into grief and Viet Nam Viet Nam
......................... Mister--do you really think the kids were not affected?
Cuestiones naturales, 1998 - José Viera 
......................... And I don't know how this second story goes but
......................... narrative construction -and anyway under Nixon time All time oh anyway I'm not
......................... attached to getting it quite right so the way I've synthesized the tale goes like this--
......................... Denny was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam or no that's not right he flew these cargo planes
......................... some kind of special ones but I don't know tne name and to this day he and his wife Pat -
......................... at every holiday gathering--they fly them still a group of vets all the guys in Vietnam in
......................... Vietnam they flew these planes too
......................... and there is something there
......................... yes we know
......................... the history forgetting the thing inside post civil war the vets they said could never talk
......................... about it and then that time in Utica Bosnian resettlement the kids there always watching
......................... clocks Ramadan and no gum even and here we were bearing down Iraq and Muslim and
......................... the white kids refugees their dads were dead and the four year old in mom's class
......................... screams "Babke the door! babke the door!" every day for weeks what she remembered
......................... war war war
......................... close the door
......................... and a story somewhere the little girl and the grandma gathered chestnuts
......................... someone got shot was left for--but which one--and the other left with her apron full
......................... but I don't know or want to talk about the women how many times a day of rape
......................... but every day when I come home the door the dog and if she's there then no one after
......................... inside to get me
......................... So, Mister, the thing indeed is our political moment bear down this generation too hard
......................... like birth which you wouldn't know and Jonathan asked me to explain one time
......................... there were no words I couldn't tell and how come--labor. it's hard. lapse to that then
......................... silence.
......................... So the thing My Appalachia how it was "the kids are alright" we never were or only just
......................... alongside the edge of every thing and outside we blew the bullet up squeezed it in the
......................... vise til pop! white lights it was a secret we'd been blowing golf balls found somewhere
......................... and found the bullet top blew I couldn't see for a long time just white light and the fear
......................... that had they heard the sound? the grown ups at that party, you weren't there then Kimmy
......................... and I was older too but the fear to have to telling--Jane's gone blind we put a bullet in
......................... and didn't know but somehow miracle of children my sight came back and we just kept
......................... the whole thing secret//
Tránsito, 2004 - José Viera
......................... Earlier, tho, and how to tell this too, my dad, he went to college--1st time--1st gen--I
......................... teach them now I wish I could reach across that wounded--well, he dropped out, they
......................... often do went home, met my
......................... mother
......................... so now I'm here
......................... but before before
......................... Viet Nam
......................... the wheels of state were rolling
......................... and he lived with a sugar king! this was in Florida--close to Cuba--I don't know how to
......................... include more sort of drunk when he told me and from so much silence and turn away I
......................... never know what might come or when to listen--but I should have taken notes, I know--
......................... so some big company Domino? the heir to that the sugar kid--he was his roommate
......................... my father
.................................... the whole world
......................... later, up that same coast, Newport, a rented cottage
......................... so much faking class this was and is important to my mother's sisters and she the little
......................... one goes alone, knows better. there was some guy running drugs--this would have been
......................... under Reagan--he had a yacht or chartered one, right, for the guy who owned it--the
......................... hull was loaded some seventies code name--heroine?cocaine? some druggy powder--
......................... what you make sense of at the edge of those boys so fucked by joblessness and come
......................... back warped and wounded and how to reinsert yourself into the everyone who only wants
......................... to look the other way from who you are and what you come from. I feel this still and
......................... never know how to tell but why I write you and I write you I am thinking him and
......................... wishing language just enough to cover and not opaque and yet all that broken space no
......................... way to fix and so I too don't bother looking but the turn away is not a choice
......................... the things you carry
......................... weighty
......................... Jane Sprague
......................... De: My Appalachia
Aparece publicado en la revista PLAN B , no.0 febrero 2008. Es una revista que contiene poemas en español e inglés de diferentes autores y aunque me gusta poner los textos de otros idiomas con traducción, en este caso no es posible, decidí hacer una excepción para mostrar algo del contenido en los dos idiomas. En la siguiente entrada podrán leer uno de los poemas en español, y para expresar los objetivos de la publicación tomo prestadas las palabras del blog :
Aprovechando este caso me gustaría informarles que de vez en cuando pondré poemas en inglés sin traducción, no la hay o no he podido acceder a ella, que me agradan. Muchas gracias.