war_poetry | Vytautas Pliura, 'In The Hands Of The Enemy'

In The Hands Of The Enemy

Their skin was ivory
The jungle was emerald
They kept me in a bamboo cage
I was given, quite mysteriously, a
mahogany chair to sit in
A strange priviledge

Because I was known to be gay
they let me grow orchids in my cell
Orchids don't lust after much light
I also fed the monkeys and the peacocks
And was let out to make rice paper at the
blind woman's hut

Often

When a South Vietnamese prisoner was to
be executed

That prisoner could request to humiliate a
prisoner from the USA by making him give the condemned person
oral sex

Mark and Willard both had jet black hair
and did not impress the Montagnards

One mountain man traveled 250 kilometers to cut off some of
my blond riglets to weave dolls for his children

I, blue-eyed Centrail Illinois farm boy, a little speck
of purple-mountain-majesty among the hobbled rubber trees
and the elflike golden shimmering teak trees
Was led into a clearing
The prisoner to be shot was tied to a post, often I could
hear the women washing their clothes in the Red River singing
lullabies
Hands tied behind my back
I was lowered to my knees

One boy shot his semen down my throat as he lurched
with bullets

Loins quivering
It took him ten minutes to die
It took them that long
to free his fingers
from my hair

by Vytautas Pliura