I. Compus

You came with ships and cane,
your god, your boots across our backs —
seven bloodlines of your name, and de stain
don’t wash—the flames turned black,
his palms above the wick, a bottle set
to spinning on a stool beside the bunk—
it turned the while, turning, turning yet,
the chant beneath it like a man half-drunk.
De pwen done find you, can’t come free,
Mèt Kalfou open, cord been drawn—
de Loa cho is coming, you don’t see—
his eyes gone wide as country, wide as dawn—
He got you now—the bokor smiled—you been engage.
O Frenchie, he done open up de gate.

II. The Sweep

Helen’s easy breath was at my neck,
the soju sweetened on the tongue,
when canvas lifted off the trucks, flecked
the road with KNP—a dozen, young
and hard, with shears for any man whose hair
ran past the collar; ran them through,
or beat them where they stood, the village square
become a yard where order took its due—
the yobos shoved aside or struck,
until one officer got ringed, and felt
his hair torn out in matted bloody clumps.
Park Chung-hee should die for this! I yelled—
then canvas swung across the trucks, sealed,
and Bong Il Chon went quiet, unconsoled.

III. The Suit

He peeled his gloves and laid them on the chair
like severed hands—then coat, then tripod, then
the lens aimed at the Quonset window where
the wall rose twenty feet. Look through it. When
you see those stones, he said, above the wall—
forty thousand PRK, waiting on the other side—
your orders, fight them man to man until
Inchon, into the sea. You understand? He smiled:
The Hunzikers, your Alpine blood, the snow–
you wonder why those Asian features sit
that way on you? The Imjin corridor below—
your ruthless forebears crested it.
Remember, John, whose side you’re on. He dressed,
packed up his lens, and left the rest.

IV. The Ambush

A bar, the agitator’s shove, the fist
I never saw—then black came down like weight,
like something from a butcher’s list
of what I owed, the interest paid—
I surfaced in a mirror, my face a page
of broken lines, a nose gone sideways, blood
dried in the creases—ten shades past the edge
of green, then fell again into the flood
of spirits, in and out of x-ray sites
and last, the back of a deuce-and-a-half,
some private giving me my final rites,
who dropped me in my bunk. Compus laughed
above me, in the dark. What have I done to you?
I asked. It’s nothin’ Frenchie, nothin’ but Mèt Kalfou.

V. Helen

A bottle set to spinning on a stool,
turning, turning yet—a rocket sound
now rising from its throat. I knew the rule:
to see inside its mouth was death. She came around
through dark and lay beside me, hair pressed
flat against my throat, the coal stove ticking down—
and something in the room denied the rest
of ordinary air, a sweetness grown
to blight; twin halos blooming at the bulb’s
cold filament, the pressure dropping slow
as breath withdraws—I found the rags she’d packed
inside the flue, felt carbon working through
my blood, and heard her voice beyond the sun:
Me and you, we die, we go to happy mountain.