SoC 3:1

Agent Orange

Do you remember Vietnam, rainy jungles,

foreign words thrown at you moving faster

than your agility at hearing?

O’ Agent Orange, It must have been cold there,

absorbed in muddied tropical mazes,

the only way through, a machete’s map stained green:

its biting lines chemically burned,

tattered edges nicked from overuse,

timbered handle marred by leaky orange-striped barrels.

Was it two clicks north or three?

I don’t remember the day you came home in late 1971;

I wasn’t yet conceived.

Daddy showed mother the map, and how it took him down the north side,

where death was spread by AK-47’s on playgrounds.

He used his to sniper an infant boy sitting on a land mine.

O’ my chemical forefather! My father’s overseas jungle companion!

You sprayed them before they could spray you.

Agent Orange, do you know your life toll?