Danang West Security by Peter Mladinic

While people were getting blown to bits

I guarded Bridge Ramp’s dust, 

I guarded the long, quiet Shell Road,

 

101 Doc Lap an employment center 

across the street from a white cathedral; 

20 Duy Tan a Naval Intelligence office,

stone house set back in trees; 

and the White Elephant, our headquarters.

 

At the Admiral’s Quarters, I spun Dinah

Washington’s Make Believe Dreams 

in my head.

 

One night at Museum Pier, the jeep patrol

caught Sheldon, a guard, hiding,

in a fetal position 

under a stone bench, his hands 

on his helmet, as if to stop mortar thuds. 

 

At my post behind the Officer’s Club, 

I read in the Stars & Stripes.

I opened a letter from my mother:

a friend 

back in the world had OD’d.

 

At 101 a rumor of plentiful work

drew peasants in conical hats 

to an iron gate, firehoses moved them back. 

I swung a nightstick.  

 

One day at Bridge Ramp

I fired my M16 to put down a dog 

run over by a truck.

 

One night at Duy Tan, 

a young Vietnamese man who’d been 

on the back of a scooter, lay in the street,

he’d caught some kind bomb, 

his guts spilled out of his white shirt. 

I wonder if anyone held his hand

as he lay dying.

 

About the Poet:

Peter Mladinic’s fifth book of poems, Voices from the Past, is due out in September 2023 from Better Than Starbucks Publications.  An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico.