Clothed in my cheap JC Penny’s suit, holding
a bible, sitting on a container of disinfectant
that smells like murder, like what they’d use to clean
the war machine of the United States of America,
sitting in the utility closet the president of my
draft board called their “waiting room.”
The door ajar, I see Ben Ramone in his Sunday best,
Ben who years before struck me out with his ferocious
curveball during our Little League All Star Game,
who now pleads with the board. Who would care
for his wife, for his kids, should he be killed? They
treat Ben the way all Mexicans are treated in Cheyenne
in the sixties. They are so discriminated against they
aren’t mentioned in discussions of racial prejudice.
When it’s my turn, I emerge from the closet with
my bible and my convictions. I’m filing for conscientious
objection in a state so conservative it might as well be
in the deep south. I tell the board that I’m a pantheist,
make Spinoza’s argument that all of nature is sacred,
is god, that to kill a human being is to kill a part of god.
The old men on the board look perplexed—one falls asleep,
a more sentient member wants to know why I wouldn’t kill
for my country. “No people die,” I quote Yevtushenko,
“only worlds die in them.” Who am I to extinguish a world?
Why not volunteer as a medic, another draft board don asks.
I would, I say, but I’d treat the most wounded person and
if that was a Viet Cong, I’d treat him. One board member,
an army colonel, turns white (or whiter). He must be
imagining what it would be like to go into combat
with the likes of me.
Six months later, with trembling hands, I open a letter
from my draft board. They have granted my request.
I will never have to kill someone I don’t know, because
someone else I don’t know, tells me to. But what about Ben,
his wife, his kids? To whom did they hand the flag
that draped his coffin?
--
Copyright 2022 Charlie Brice's books include All the Songs Sung (Angels Flight, 2021). He lives in Pittsburgh.
As a Vietnam-era conscientious objector myself, I’m undoubtedly prejudiced, but it seems to me that the national dialogue doesn’t focus enough on the experiences and contributions of conscientious objectors. And I’m pretty sure that’s not an accident.
Went into some high school page and saw pictures of classmates who died in Vietnam. So many. And I remember one from my old neighborhood. We used to play war, but the girls could only be nurses and then I grew up a hippie and anti war, even as I remember one boyfriend, a marine, who sent me pictures of what they would do to those anti war kids ( I never told him) and my old brain just remembered the name of the boy who said girls could only be nurses, who died in Vietnam. I wonder what he would think if he lived today? RIP Tommy Good
Vox Populi 
Dear Michael, Thanks so much for doing your usual wonderful job with my poem. It’s always an honor to be in Vox Populi. Love to you and Eva, Charlie
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Hi Charlie,
Thanks for reminding me about this wonderful poem Out of the Closet. Glad I was able to run it today. My best to Judy.Best to you as well.
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As a Vietnam-era conscientious objector myself, I’m undoubtedly prejudiced, but it seems to me that the national dialogue doesn’t focus enough on the experiences and contributions of conscientious objectors. And I’m pretty sure that’s not an accident.
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Thank you for your service, John.
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And I am crying because I recently (A few years ago)?
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Went into some high school page and saw pictures of classmates who died in Vietnam. So many. And I remember one from my old neighborhood. We used to play war, but the girls could only be nurses and then I grew up a hippie and anti war, even as I remember one boyfriend, a marine, who sent me pictures of what they would do to those anti war kids ( I never told him) and my old brain just remembered the name of the boy who said girls could only be nurses, who died in Vietnam. I wonder what he would think if he lived today? RIP Tommy Good
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Thanks for sharing these memories, Barb!
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