LIT
The Things They Carry “This celebration is a way for us to heal by stating our experiences, to create an understanding of us. As Eli Wright said, ‘We don’t want to be honored, supported or thanked. We want to be understood so we can rejoin our communities and rebuild our lives.’ “So, I figured I would just open with one of my poems.” She grabs the book, Warrior Writers, from the stand next to her and begins flipping through the pages until she finds the poem she had written five years earlier. Her voice grows stern and loud, her body language stiff, as she begins reading. “We are not your heroes Heroes come back in body bags and caskets We are now society’s burden, ALCOHOLICS DRUG ADDICTS POTHEADS CRIPPLES We are displaying our pain. Begging for help that falls onto the VA’s deaf ears. Pill-popping to silence us into numbness and dead eyes,” her eyes snap up as she gives a piercing look at the audience. “We are not your heroes We are now a mental disease. NO VACCINATIONS FOR PTSD. NO CURE for post traumatic stress disorder. We fight for our cure with ALCOHOLISM DRUG ADDICTIONS SMOKING WEED… We are hurting ourselves, Letting society watch our pain and suffering... *** “Ok so here’s how it works,” Jenny explained. “I give you a prompt and you free write for ten or fifteen minutes. I won’t make you read. Well, usually I will.” “Yeah, if you don’t do it that means you got somethin that’s horrible,” Louie, an activist and Vietnam veteran, said. “No, no judgments Louie! It’s a safe environment, did you forget these rules?” Jenny said, laughing. “Ok, so the prompt ... Do you have a recurring image, dream, thought, maybe something you see, a consistent memory? The main gist of it is a recurring image. Annnd you can write about that! Questions, comments?” The silence reinforces everyone’s understanding. “All right, so like ten minutes…” “Who wants to go first?” Jenny said, breaking the silence. “Jim, since it was your idea? Jim, an anti-war activist and Vietnam veteran, looks down through his glasses at his notebook and begins to read his thoughts aloud. Heat waves, you know the wavy lines that you can see coming off the surface exposed to the sun on a hot sweltering day. My wavy lines are coming off of the PSP runway custom designed to allow C-130’s to
land. The NC7 Caribou’s are no big deal, they just look funny. Poking up through the holes in the PSP is of course, red dirt. The source of the red dust that colors your weapons, your hooch, your radios, the sand bags and more eminently your fatigues, your boots, your hair, and your teeth if you smile too much. I thought I’ve left this image behind and although I’m always looking for it, it only appears on hot nights in my sleep. Jenny breaks the silence that lingers after his last word, “That was really good. I like that one a lot. The imagery is really intense.” “I can still taste it. It’s one of those things,” Jim answered. Harry, a non-combat veteran, volunteers to go next, holding his paper between tattooed fingers that spell out ‘WITH LOVE’ across his knuckles. Familiar landscapes change, there’s more shadows, more darkness. The traffic is just officers, soldiers patrolling in car, on foot. Public places are eerily empty. Catching glimpses here and there. Is that the shimmer of a badge reflecting from a streetlight? One of the few streetlights on? It’s all in plain view to me. I don’t know where I am, I don’t know who’s around me. Parks are empty, plazas empty, houses dim, streets dark, cars parked, where is everyone? What’s what, who’s who? Those are
“AS YOU DESCRIBE EVERYTHING, IT JUST ALL COMES TOGETHER.” cattle trucks. What the fuck. To round them up. To round who up? The subversive. Who calls the shots? This scene has a lot of different looks but in my mind it resembles something of what I heard of, the Nazi’s in WWII. The fascism. And here in my mind, the public witnessing that fascism again. In plain view, in plain sight. Who’s who, which side is who on? The cops are really cops now. Shit I don’t know ... But I wonder how shit happens when it’s all not so friendly anymore ...” He looks up at the table of faces looking at him, processing, “That’s it.” Jenny giggles, “That’s good!” “That’s an image!” Louie comments. “As you describe everything, it just all comes together,” Jenny said. “The whole thing about writing is to show, not tell, and you’re all very good at that. Describing things like the lights, the badges, the cattle cars,” She throws her head back in laughter, as if remembering a recurring image of her own. “That’s how I ended up in jail once, because I refused to get in one of those. “Oh yeah?” Louie asked. “Yeah, I got tased. It was awesome,” she said nonchalantly. “Was it during a demonstration?” asked Dirk, a first-timer at the workshop. “Nooo, it was at a DUI checkpoint,” Jenny says, throwing her head back in laughter. “Yeah, I used to drink a little bit.” *** “…And I’m HEREE, to REMIND YOUUU, of the MESS you LEFT when you went AWAYY,” Jenny screamed crazily, without inhibitions into the microphone, her eyes darting, following the lines of words
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