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I WAIT 

LANCE JEFFERS

(A Vietnamese soldier defects to the NLF; upon capture by the Vietnamese soldiery, he is forced to kneel, then is shot.)

I wait for the white light to break inside my brain.

The faces of my uncles are watchful and wrinkled, 
there is no stain of grief upon their faces.

With terror my mother's face is hatcheted and sere.

It is the briefest step to yesterday
when I was a shriveled boy
and my suffering and hunger
were hillfires in the night of my body.

In humiliation I kneel upon the ground
and wait for the white light to break inside my brain.

Until the Americans came
I did not know that I was brown.

Now I die a brown man, 
short of stature,
thin like a cat,
dwarfed by the sleek white dogs.

I did not know until they came
that I was so hungry,
until the great white dogs came unto my land
who laugh like hammers on steel,
sear the streets with their glance,
get drunk and kill the dirty the women,
my land is a whore to the great white statues without souls.

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Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-09 12:14:19