Gay American Fiction

Pilatus

The soldier

is no longer

the property of the state

when he dies

he reverts

to his family,

to the mourning women

moving among the cabbages

at the grocer’s

dropping Kleenexes,

to the father

come up from whatever fields

to read the withering telegram.

No longer state’s property:

their own, at last.

The women move together

fluid

from cabbages

to long trays of meat

(that man in butcher white

washing up)

no freer they

for him,

killed.

That butcher in spatter

commonplaces usually

about fair trade,

but today,

washing,

improvises how the young man

(again theirs)

uh, kept them free.

.