Vox Populi
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Molly Fisk: American Riddle
When you can’t figure out how to stop
the war in Iraq, much less how to make
enough money to pay your mortgage,
moving the hundred and eighty dollars
from savings back into your checking
account as if that will help — when it’s
all you can do to acknowledge the actual
world and not lose yourself half the afternoon
in People Magazine where the movie stars
revolve like frosted cakes in a glass case
at the old Lady Baltimore bakery
on Throckmorton, before your home town
became so chic none of the kids
from your high school could afford
to live there — when you’re so tired
of reinventing yourself you want to lie down
on the road, right on the double yellow line
in front of your driveway, exactly where
two of your cats have been killed and wait
for someone to run you over but with your luck
you’d probably just lose an arm, no doubt
the right one, so you’d have to relearn
holding the pencil against the page
at the proper angle, and your sweater’s
sleeves would need to be hemmed
to cover the stump and then you’d really
have something to complain about
as well as something in common with soldiers
returning from the Middle East
who left precious parts of themselves behind,
which is where this poem begins and ends:
How the hell are we going to stop the cavalier
waste? How are we going to apologize?
Copyright 2010 Molly Fisk. From The More Difficult Beauty, HipPocket Press
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Dover Air Force Base during the American-Iraq War
Vox Populi 
The photograph with the poem is one of the saddest I’ve ever seen. While Molly allows herself emotion, the soldiers in the photo are standing st attention. Whatever they are feeling, it’s all held inside. Very painful. Who was the photographer? Credit should be given.
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Reblogged this on Site Title and commented:
Wow, it’s great to recognize yourself in somebody else’s poem.
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