Hi Gary,
This is a great poem! I guess anyone who's seen The Deerhunter, and all the 
other post-Nam films, will find lots of connections - as well as things 
unique to what you're saying.
Billy Gray Jay sounds a wonderful name! I don't think it makes any 
difference to the poem but I wonder(ed) if the title was Read (said "red") 
in the past tense or if it is "Read" (reed) in the present tense. When I 
read the title before I read the poem I sort of heard myself 
saying/accepting it in the present tense... But then the poem evolved itself 
into a past tense poem and I didn't find that problem/issue arising when I 
looked at it again!
And I found the lines:
">to a stranger's family,
>friends no long friends"
both powerful but (sometimes) I wanted to read "to a family of strangers" - 
and I guess the word "long" is a typo for "longer". (Like lobbying is 
lobbing...) The "stranger" line's caught me a couple of times since - and 
I'm sure you must mean it's his own family (who haven't changed as much as 
he has) that he returns to!
And is "latte machine" the right name for the apparatus? (It might be, I 
just don't know!). If the machine has another user name it might work just 
as well. It it hasn't OK!
"VW size shells" is such a chilling, lingeringly so, image as well!
A canny poem!
Bob








>From: Gary B <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Gray Jay Read to Us
>Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2002 09:53:32 -0800
>
>Gray Jay Read to Us
>
>Billy Gray Jay, featured reader, asked,
>"Who protested the war?  The war, Nam."
>A few hands barely raised.
>"Tell the truth.  Who?"
>Two-thirds of his audience raised their arms.
>
>And Gray Jay read us poems
>about lobbying VW size shells into the jungle,
>shelling villages at night,
>      too tired to sleep during the day,
>of the return home
>to a stranger's family,
>friends no long friends
>     though they broke eggs with him at Denny's,
>stares and whispers,
>the scars he carries,
>his words ointment for the pain.
>
>Through our applause,
>congratulations,
>cross conversation,
>rattle of the latte machine,
>we did not hear the next question
>
>even after we heard a poem
>written to praise the color blue.
>
>
>
>Nov Sharon Svendsen at: http://gardawg.homestead.com/gardawg.html
>
>Writer's Hood at http://www.writershood.com/
>
>Poets for Peace.  ˇPoemas sí, balas no!


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