there's a vaccination scar
on my left shoulder
from when i was
a kid in vietnam
and on the 66 once
i saw an old vet
with the same scar
on his shoulder
an indented circle
a nub
i didn't know
what answers to give,
so i felt foolish.
i know now that
it was because
i never asked the questions
my dad drew
a cartoon of a man
on one of the hundreds
of Smith Barney Shearson
paper pads we had in the basement
( i never knew how we got so
many of those pads and i believe
we were told, or rather what we told
ourselves was that someone
in the family
got it through
work
"i used to draw
a lot as a child
myself."
he drew a strange
creature that resembled
a man, with two arms
and two legs and clothing
but with a very large snout
almost like a hippo
or pigsy
the same room,
the game room
the nintendo,
the cold floor
i remember not being very impressed
with my dad's drawing as he grinned
and laughed sheepishly for how rusty he was
having almost drawn nothing but blueprints and boxes
for almost as long as we've been here
