The Badges and Medals on my Grandmother’s Wall

The United States of America

To all who shall see these presents, greeting: 

This is to certify that the president of the United States of America authorized by executive order, 

February 4, 1944 The Bronze Star Medal To Private Joseph C. Discharged 37 484 137 Infantry

For meritorious achievement in ground operations against the enemy

Pacific Theater of Operations, during the Northern Solomons Campaign

Given under my hand in the City of Washington this 4^th day of August 1964

Signed United States War Office

Followed by four other metal patches connected to fabric:

Purple Star, Asian Pacific Campaign, World War Two, and Efficiency, Honor, Fidelity

Matching the shrapnel that most likely spurred the Alzheimer’s in his blood that

Felled him in his fifties

I have read this framed piece more times than I ever recall speaking to my grandfather

That is to say I never recall speaking to him, knowing only that I have a picture of him

Holding me and transcribed the basics of the above in detail this Veteran’s Day

In doing so I am drawn to a single word: enemy

The other countries, the other men, some which are invariably dead as well

An allotment sooner than his fifty years at the trajectory of his barrel

Honed in the swamps of Louisiana pecking squirrels and quail

As if the bones become indistinguishable  

I don’t know what the Filipinos or Japanese call their Veterans Day, 

Most of the medals left to those islands washed in a typhoon and Katrina’s bigger sister Haiyan

Mocks the gender of death or the idea of an adversary in water  

POW, MIA, blood-cell honor and a flag, victory in zero sum, humanity in a flood

Hitler is the ultimate detour Arian Satan rationalizing the patriotic rabble tears sporting

Joyous Western pride inside the sadness of white blotting white

As brown, yellow, and ivory weld oceans in skin carpets like sail cloths

Sealing submarines tight to keep the pressure of felicitous ceremony in the haughty notion

That if certain men did not stand on lines so that other men did not cross them

Those behind the lines would perish to uncertainty of those who never would

That is to say, I never recall wishing to kill, knowing I have a picture in my mind

Of people thinking I did, do, or will so as the lined-men are necessary honors

Sacrificing for the gentle pull of never knowing the extreme

Of juggling enemies, waving flags, and storm relief and interconnection’s subtle tears