When Jacob lost his leg & went blind
four days from a bomb in Hanoi, he
saw visions of his sister. At five
years old in Pittsburgh, he found his
mother hung from a leash in the parlor
& tickled the tops of her hardening feet
to tease her out from the silence. When
she wouldn’t wake he put his ear to her
belly to listen for sweet Cecilia. When
Cecilia wouldn’t stir or kick & his mother
started to stink, he went downstairs
to wait for his father & gaze out into
the snow. Dusk-blue faded tangled periphery
& a buck crept quiet from flowerless pine
pacing for somewhere to drink. Jacob admired
how it darted the dark, moved without
denting the snow, & started to shout there
in that glittering quiet to shake loose sleet
from the window. When Jacob lost his leg

§

& went blind four days from a bomb
in Hanoi, he laid alone beneath the wreckage
feeling for his face. A mile from where he lay
dying, cherry trees lined a long narrow road
lifting their sweetness toward Heaven. It was hot
& the river slow & the birds of summer
circled the sky to pick out eyes from the fallen.
It was all a dream a vision, his hearing gone
left leg snapped in two, when a song began
to slice his sight & sift down slow from his
sister’s lips, to wake him out of his slumber.
She said get up & he did—her skirt like skin
in mud—& the two of them followed
the river's ridge, wading through jungled briar.
Little girls playing with dolls in gardens, froze
while watching him near. They said người chết
đi bộ meaning “dead man walk” & streaked
to hide in sugared shade, afraid of what he'd
do. Their laughs like his sister’s the one he
still heard—high & perfect & small. Her green
eyes his. Her hair so blonde when she leapt
from trees, it flashed like coiled flames.

Luke Johnson

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