� Facing It � . . . Yusef Komunyakaa
� You Probably Can�t Hook Up My VCR Either � . . . Karen Wurl
� Making a Fist � . . . Naomi Shihab Nye
� Inventing Jobs � . . . Hal Sirowitz
Facing It
Yusef Komunyakaa
My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way�the stone lets me go.
I turn that way�I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.
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You Probably Can�t Hook Up My VCR Either
Karen Wurl
You didn�t read the instructions.
I sent you a letter, it said:
Love me.
Love me a lot.
I thought at first you
were being discreet
or subtle,
subdued,
cautious. I didn�t realize
you simply dense � See, this is the part
where you�re supposed to take me in your arms,
don�t you get it?
Some people don�t know when to
quit but honey you
don�t know when to start.
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Making a Fist
Naomi Shihab Nye
For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern
___past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside
___my skin.
�How do you know if you are going to die?�
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
�When you can no longer make a fist.�
Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all
___my questions,
Clenching and opening one small hand.
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Inventing Jobs
Hal Sirowitz
You�re almost thirty, Father said,
& you don�t have a job. When people
ask me what you�re doing I make up
a job for you. And I have to remember
what I tell them, & not give you
a new job every week or they�ll get
suspicious. And if you do find a job,
& people tell me that I said you were working
at one store but then they saw you at another I�ll be
so happy that you�re finally standing on your own
two feet that I won�t mind if they think I�m a liar.
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