T W Perkins

Missing in Action
Taking You Home

Missing in Action

My roommate hangs those
pictures of missing children
all over the refrigerator.
She never throws them out
as they come in the mail,
day after day.

Me, I paste
pictures of old friends
in photo albums,
filling book after book.
I collect them from
among my own photos,
or from newspapers, magazines,
or other friends.

We're both doing
the same thing
you know,
holding onto
all those smiling faces
of missing children
and dead men.

Taking You Home

for Patrick and Richie

The first time you took me
home to L.A.
it was to give your family
the double blow.
We obsessed for hours
About possible reactions –
all for nothing.
Every one of them
Would have died in your stead.
They treated me
like one of their own.

In the last three years
we've been back several times,
and they've been here.
Your parents came to visit
for a week this summer,
but stayed for months
to take care of you, of us.

Now we're going there again one final time
and I'm sitting here alone
among strangers
on that long flight
you always hated,
writing this goodbye.

Missing In Action was published in the San Fernando Poetry Journal, Volume IV, #3.

Taking you Home was published in America''s Review, Issue Number 6, Writing of the political movements.

T.W. Perkins lives in St. Paul and constantly wonders why.