Pantoum for ‘Real America’
By D.A. Gray
The men we knew have long since passed.
Their bodies still fill the broadest doorways
but something in their eyes, their voice has gone
replaced by a rage that crackles over the radio.
Their bodies still fill the broadest of doorways
and their eyes follow us, from great distances.
There’s only the rage that crackles over the radio
where once warm greetings welcomed us.
The old men’s eyes follow us — from a great distance.
Maybe we just remember our small town wrong
or only think the greetings warm that welcomed us
and not simply suspicion in code.
Maybe we just remember our small town wrong
the way bared teeth appear to be a smile sometimes.
Perhaps it’s simply suspicion in code
or we forgot how far we went to save our way of life.
Bared teeth, from here, looked like smiles sometimes.
Tales across the table — the sum of what we knew.
We never questioned the myth of our way of life.
It was simpler, those images in black and white.
Stories across the table were the sum of what we knew.
Now there’s only rage crackling over the radio.
It was simpler then, reality in black and white —
but the minds we knew have long since passed.
D.A. Gray is the author of the new collection of poems, Contested Terrain (FutureCycle Press, 2017) and one previous collection, Overwatch (Grey Sparrow Press, 2011). His poetry has appeared in The Sewanee Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Appalachian Heritage, Kentucky Review, The Good Men Project, Still: The Journal, War, Literature and the Arts among many other journals. Gray recently completed his graduate work at The Sewanee School of Letters and at Texas A&M-Central Texas. A retired soldier and veteran, the author writes and lives in Central Texas with his wife, Gwendolyn. Visit his website at www.dagray.net.
Image credit: DonkeyHotey via a Creative Commons license.