McNamara's Report Card
Nothing like standing sweetly sometimes, flush cheeked
and eggshell white, slightly speckled like the flesh of your
fears,
you lay the heat over you like a shawl, a honey-mint
motif on the sliced edge of your tongue, regretful
administrations, escalations,
the war in Vietnam when my mother
wandered onto the porch to suck the marrow of
the full moon into her skin,
he sleeps, McNamara on a knife's edge,
distantly, standing by the phone when
JFK was shot, looky-loo, with Lynden in the wings,
I was too busy in the womb, created
while my grandmother carried my mother,
weeping heavy sighs,
we name the planes that take off over the horizon
along the Green River, and think,
there he is, there he is.