Pvt. Algernon Adams

THE UNKNOWN SERVICE

This is the last shirt I will ever fold.
Here is my armless sleeve,
my face huddled up next to you,
my memory wound on the forever
replay of a grieving heart.
Here is a medal to honor
my blank chest, my shot weapon.
Here is the Humvee humming
into endless summer.
Here are my tears
folded into my body.
Here is your joy
pressed into an unplucked flower.
Here is the single rain drop
disguised as an unused sorrow.
Here is the many-tongued
denial of a mission, the lost
taste of a mother's cookie,
a father's last tool left vacant
in the vacant lot of an old garage,
heart-stopped, deadly
only to the dead
dis-re-membering.

Stop them in an alley.
Give away the clothes.
The stray cats flee
like shrapnel on a weak
horizon. All the blinds
gone bad, the future
sabotaged by a sutured smile.

Here is the last letter
I will ever write you
buried in the armor
of irony, the lit fuse
of democracy, burning
(o' burning!) for you.

Lorna Dee Cervantes