Desert Salt

NIKK WASSERMAN

Dear Friend, we have been 

tracing the outer circles

of each other awhile. Before

I found you steep yourself in salt

in the ocean next to your home, before

I saw your knees as broken ladders.

I guess the military owns a profit

on poetry too, but I remember the summer

you came back from West Point

and told your first rape joke

imagine: a baby book

private’s first dehumanization

I see the fourth grade boy with a soft face

and then there’s you, in training

hair buzzed short, life suspended seven

years—I know what my father did,

a military man and how he came back with nothing 

but pride for country

nothing left.

Are you still in there?

Can you still feel your skin and bones

cup an AK-47 as a cradle, the rattle

and the starry revolver above

cups an AK-47 as the rattle, a cradle:

Can you still feel your skin and bones—

are you still in there?

nothing left

but pride for country

—a military man. How he came back with nothing.

I know my father did

hair buzzed short, life suspended twenty-seven

years and then you, in training

fourth grade boy with soft face

private’s first dehumanization

imagine: a baby book

you told your first rape joke

and came back from west point

on poetry too, I remember the summer

the military owns a profit of,

your knees as broken ladders

in the ocean next to your home, before

I find you steeped in the salt

of another for a while, before

tracing the outer circles

we had been. Dear—

NIKK WASSERMAN is a professional multitasker: 22-year-old, Brandeis student, gluten-free/ vegan baker, peer counselor, waitress, peer educator, activist, and over-committed to just about all of it. They are a recent winner of the Ramon Feliciano Poetry Prize.

The Adirondack Review

FALL 2014