by Alejandro Escudé
I’ve learned there was a time they
wished they’d forbidden the media
from photographing dead Vietnam
soldiers. American flag-draped
coffins were seen arriving on planes
flown through Nixon-clouds.
Macabre, isn’t it? Needing to see
the bodies stacked like the skeletal
victims in Auschwitz? Oh I take
the nurse on Eyewitness News at her
white-coated word, sitting in an office,
backgrounded by books, Epidemiology
prominent in the titles. But I want
to see the Civil War leg-towers,
and if there’s a law, then blurring
would do, or a drone flown over
the languid masses, doctors shuttling
stretchers back and forth, a man’s leg
askew for some reason, a woman
crying, cradling a loved one’s
inert head against her chest.
Alejandro Escudé published his first full-length collection of poems My Earthbound Eye in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches high school English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.