Student Union Lounge, 1978

Dennis has got a picture
to show us:
ears he cut from dead VC
in the Mekong Delta.
Like dried apricots,
they’re lined up neatly
in the shoebox
he keeps them in.

One ear from each kill,
Dennis, or
did you take two?

He laughs and winks.
I had a lot of fun over there,
he says.

We sit next to each other in
Urban Studies. He and the professor
get along well and he has a grasp
of some of the nuances of the evolution
of cities that is admirable.

Right now, we’re stoned
out of our gourds
after a lunchtime drive.

No one will sit near us when we’re like this,
when I’m sitting looking at Dennis’ picture
of the apricots in the box, when I
an trying to imagine
how it must have been, amazed at the fact
that this was permitted,
that men who were permitted
to do these things walk among us
with their children and their insights
into the way civilization grows.

Wow, I say.
I want to hear more,
I say, and y’know,
I’m hungry, I say.

Let’s get a burger,
says Dennis.
And we do.