Kathryn Jordan
Pillar of Salt
Because the girl in the photo looks like me,
and because we’ve all but forgotten Vietnam,
I have a clipping with photo of a family reuniting
after the war. Children charging at the soldier,
daughter leaping for him, clunky 1970 shoes,
lanky legs, short skirt, arms outstretched,
wife trotting along, holding her boy’s hand.
War is a flower that draws blood from the soil
and lives on in the seed. I was nearly grown
before I realized my own real father flew in Vietnam.
My mother only told me he was on cruise.
I never worried, never sent him cassettes of songs
and poems —as I was asked to do for her new husband.
When our stepfather came home from Vietnam,
my brother and I ran over the tarmac.
Glancing back, I saw my mother in blue suit,
blonde bouffant, no smile, walking slowly.
We moved to the hills and everything went south.
Through the walls over and over, I heard: Fran,
Fran, I never went out on you, Fran, I swear.
They traded the Pontiac stationwagon for two VW bugs.
She took off for five more husbands;
he went back to see about Laos.
A lifetime later, when I call my ex-stepfather to say
my unhoused brother is dead, he says, how sad,
then confesses how attractive the bar girls were in Chu Lai
and he just couldn’t help it. So I decide to tell him
about my mother’s nights out when he was in ‘Nam.
After I hang up, I dig up the clipping, learn the pilot-soldier
was a P.O.W., who’d just been served divorce papers.
I never once imagined my own father’s flight home, his hope
someone would be waiting. Is it too late to welcome
my father home from war? He’s coming now, stepping
out of the plane, taking in the sky, taking a full breath.
He’s descending the stairs, one step at a time, his shiny
military-polished shoes touching down on nothing but air.
Re-fletching
My father still means to mold me with his
articles of faith, Wall Street Journal words
proving the right to rape and rule the earth
and wound the living land. Stars and stripes
on his uniform, he didn’t know I’d yanked
stakes from the fields as my breasts began
to show. Nor did he realize I’d never forget
his use of belt and switch to enforce his rules.
Now, as blue spruce arrows burn in my hot
quiver, one breast flattened by desire to win,
I’ve come to see each battle as a thin disguise.
To do right by this beautiful world, I would
re-fletch my arrows, align the feathers, using
love’s glue to mend the vane, end all hate.
“In ‘Pillar of Salt’, the parallel stories of two military families reuniting after war reveal the damage covert coping behaviors can have not only on the soldier but also on the spouse and child. ‘Re-fletching’ reflects a deep desire to reject my own aggression against myself, others, and the earth, which I learned from those who claimed to love and own me, others, and the earth.” —Kathryn Jordan
Kathryn Jordan holds an English M.A. from UC Berkeley. Her poems twice won Honorable Mention in the Steve Kowit Poetry Prize and the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award, and twice garnered Special Merit for the Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Prize. Her work appears in The Sun, Atlanta Review, and New Ohio Review, among others. She loves to hike the East Bay Hills in search of the varied thrush that can sing two notes at the same time.