Two Poems from America’s Vietnam Era

By Shirley Skufca Hickman


Withdrawing

He hands me a form:

Permission to withdraw from English 1-A.

His hands shake but he jokes.
“I got caught in the draft.”

I refuse to send him off to war.
I scrawl a fat NO on the form,
Hand it back to him,
And he smiles and leaves.

My department chairman,
Who fought in World War II,
Comes to my office and
Hands me another form.

“Not signing this paper,
Won’t keep him from the draft.
He still has to leave school.
And report to the Army.”

It’s department policy.
Just as sending young men
To fight in Vietnam jungles
Is America’s foreign policy.

When I fall asleep,
I dream of coffins draped
In American flags over
Those who have withdrawn.


Vietnam 1972

We cannot see the red blood
pouring from the wounds
on black and white TV.
The commentator’s voice
drowns death sounds
from our Asian war.

We sit at tables full of
ham and peas, and bread
and glance at war
between each bite of food.

We’re reassured that only ten
were killed, and more of
theirs were killed than ours,

That man we see is
not an actor on a TV screen
who spits out fake blood
in a show of death.
His terror and his pain are real.

But when that haggard face
looks like someone we know
or makes us feel or flinch,
we switch the channel
to some other show where
we won’t be involved, or care.

And while we watch the
latest football game
with feet propped up
and cool Budweiser in our hands,
that young face that we saw before,
lies covered by a sheet.

But still the war goes on,
and on
and on,
and every night at six o’clock
we watch it,
for a little while.

Copyright © 2021 by Shirley Skufca Hickman