by Stephen Petroff

Whenever he went out in the woods to work,
When he walked out into the fields,
He took a jar of water with him.
Thirty–seven years have passed since my
Grandfather went to the Land of the Dead.
Today, I found a broken mayonnaise jar
Wedged in the branches of a spruce tree
That once stood alone near a hackmatack
Grove on the edge of a garden field.
I found his jar in pieces:        Winter froze the water,
                                               Ice cracked the glass.
If the water had not leaked away, so long ago,
I could have raised the jar to my mouth,
And pressed my own lips to the imprint of his lips.
I would have tried to drink the water that he left.
If I could have done that, I could solve the thirst
That I feel for his voice, and the words he used;
I could solve the hunger that burns me, hunger for all
That I’ve forgotten about him, hunger for all
That I’ve lost in the World.

by H. D. Brown

I saw the tattoo
a snake curling around a dagger
the type of cliché
a good artist can slap on a jarhead
between beers
I saw it
in the English department office
still outlined in inflamed red
when I signed a withdraw form

He’d gotten it a hundred
yards away in a straight
line between the recruiter’s
office and mine
half a dozen neon bars
three other tattoo shops
along the way
hell it looks like
Portland Maine around here now
if there’s any difference left
between a sailor town and
a college town like this
I can’t see it

that was the last time I saw that tattoo
the last time he saw it
it was lying in the road
next to a smoking humvee

by H. D. Brown

Sailor Girl
          for J. J.

He could make them dance
the shitty sailor girl tattoos
pricked into his forearms
over months of sitting
at anchor in Cam Ranh Bay
their outline finished when
the artist was sent home
by a thatched hatch cover
hiding a captured ma deuce
in a sampan thrown open
fifty cal rounds ringing
out across the water
the tattoos of course
came home incomplete
but he could make them dance

by H. D. Brown

the scrimshaw scratchings
covering grandpa Schmidt
weren’t the patterned sailor
tattoos that cover these college girls

Captain Norm got em one at a
time the old–fashioned way
screwed stewed and tattooed
around the edges of the oceans

gave him something to look at
whenever those fucking germans
sank him he said
floating around in an octagon plywood

box with whatever you grab
and a few dying shipmates one
time for forty five days
might change a man I guess

all it did for captain norm
is drive him to more tattoos
by the time he died he was covered
all five feet four inches that was left of him

we did what he asked skinned
and tanned the son of a bitch
hung his hide behind a sheet of
glass at the San Pedro seaman’s bethel