Your own wryness against yourself is also powerfully expressed, the more so
for being mediated at -- second? -- no, third hand, in her voice. I noticed
this in the first version, and am glad you haven't tidied it out.
Dunno about you needing to do it for yourself. It needed *somebody to do it,
anyway.
Thanks.
joanna
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Wolman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2005 2:25 PM
Subject: Version 2: Lynndie England to her Baby Son
>I don't even know if this got out during the great Yesterday Malaise, not
>much matter whether it inspires response, just a thing I needed to do for
>myself. A few changes beyond correcting the spelling of Pvt. English's
>first name. As noted in what probably did not make it out, the earlier
>version of this poem (some time during the early summer) horrified someone
>who refused to even consider it. It is remarkable to me that when a
>subject is as intense as Pvt. England's conduct, all presumed "objectivity"
>vanishes and the dancer becomes the dance. I'm not the dancer, I'm
>Balanchine:-).
>
> ken
>
> LYNNDIE ENGLAND TO HER BABY SON
> (after a New York Times photograph)
>
> I can't quite look I have to
> shift my eyes
> everyone will think it's
> because I don't give a shit
>
> how about guilt? That do you?
>
> But what have I done to this child
> what have I done to this child
> made him
> without a second thought
> without a thought could believe
>
> that coming even for a few seconds
> was invulnerability
> even inside this goddamned prison
>
> I wanted Graner lying married bastard
> I should have settled
> for a gag-gift vibrator or a cucumber
>
> I was bored
> he talked to me like I was
> pretty instead of a Cabbage Patch doll
>
> only thing we did in that place
> was screw with military precision
> "C'mere Lynndie we have three minutes!"
>
> precise double-time
> child that should not have been born
> to grow up with grandparents
> live to hate his father
>
> hate me
>
> hawk phlegm: Happy Mother's Day every year
>
> "Where's your mom and dad?"
> "Doing time in Federal prison
> for torturing towelheads."
> Am I smart enough to say
> "I vas honlee vollowing orderz!"
> and do the Sieg Heil salute?
>
> No, the asshole writing this is putting words
> in my mouth but he's teaching me
> something.
>
> When I look at the child maybe I dream
> of the Ft. Bragg vet
> a phenobarbital overdose spare my son
> the misery of carelessness
> the misery made by this goddamn boredom
> the misery made of this fear fear fear
>
> spare him my and his father's names
>
> Go ahead, shits. Think me a monster
> for holding the fleeting thought that our son
> might be a doggie sacrifice
> no future but as Lynndie England's whelp
> on PTS day at the dog pound.
>
> No.
>
> Maybe there is a forgetting.
> Perhaps a forgiving.
> You will look into the plainness of my face
> deadness of my eyes
> I will not tell you.
>
> KTW/9-28-05
>
> --
> Kenneth Wolman
> Proposal Development Department
> Room SW334
> Sarnoff Corporation
> 609-734-2538
>
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