deepundergroundpoetry.com

here, she is like Annissa

so John Wayne lights up a cigarette in an old war movie
& I am right back in the bunkers, hearing the mortars
bursting around us. we youthful cavaliers, feeling the
cold fires of bravery & fear.

I remember the centerfold I kept on my locker, a pin-up
girl lying seductively on a furry rug, her body partially
covered by a black lacy thing; her hand touching a tempting
part of her that I pretended to touch. her beautiful, plaintive
eyes saying �wish you were here.�

when our post came under fire, I�d kiss my fingertips, then
plant the kiss on her lips for luck. I ran out to the bunker
knowing she longed for me to return.

one day a foreign kid came thru, I think he was Italian. he
saw my pin-up girl, grinned big, & said �Annissa!� maybe it
was the name of his girl back home. so I called her that. it
was a good word, a good name: Annissa.

when I shipped back to the States, I left her there for the
next guy who would need the luck she carried. wrote
�annissa� in plain letters, so they would know�

there is a woman who comes to me now, many years away
from the old reveries. she tells me things, of how we journey
together in each other�s heart, thru the battlefields & the
bedrooms. we share an intimacy that gives us forbearance,
from one lonely dawn to the next.

we embrace the minutes we are allowed. our hands holding, eyes
closed & cheeks touching. not wanting to be anywhere else, ever.
she can count those minutes like the beads on a rosary.

she has a name, but sometimes, in an unheard whisper,
I call her Annissa.

sit close to me. closer. & I will tell you of sundered nights, a
young soldier watching for deadly shadows thru the porthole
of a sandbag fortress, & flares lighting up the sky�

(Art: James Lee Wall)