Tonight's Poet Corner: Sweet Charity

Sweet Charity
by Belinda Roddie

Hush. Lights out on the second
story. The river's lip is plump, but closed
off to any echo of previous sound, the ripples
lost to the dying whimper of yesterday's traffic.
Thousands of feet above the rooftops, a pilot
signals for his companion
to make a crackling announcement to
the sleeping civilians just departing
from Washington, D.C.

"This is your co-pilot speaking. We ask
that you please expect turbulence in the next
hour of mutual silence."

Everything feels so,
goddamn,
dead.

A thirty-seven-year-old private,
raw from her first tour, lights a
stogie in the privacy of her hotel room.
The door says, "Smoking," so she
shouldn't get (m)any complaints.

She leaves the television on
at half-volume, just enough
to hear the eleven o'clock news
about another black girl shot to death
asking for help at the ATM
in the whitest part of town.

Half-eaten soldier pumping smoke
into her congested lungs. As if it'll
chase away the clots already coagulating
under her abused flesh. She wears one small braid
on the side of her head - a war symbol,
while the rest of her hair flies free.

Outside,

a family says goodbye after having dinner
at the four-star restaurant, where they serve
rabbit with red sauce and duck with white sauce,
and everything else with pink. Just pink.
It's a charity night, for breast cancer awareness,
with a minute or two to spare
for commemorating the men and women
of the armed forces. Earlier, the patrons

saluted an ex-Marine with one arm.
In return, he put down his fork
and flipped them off with his longest fingernail
catching the light of the cheap chandelier.

The son is most disturbed by the display,
rethinking the camo shirt he bought
at the department store downtown,
and wonders if an homage to his
fallen loved ones and lost limbs are worth
a sink in the sand instead of on pavement.
He hugs his mother and sister, and he leaves
for the hotel, where his room is on
the second floor, which smells heavily
of fanatics' tobacco.

When he reaches the door, he sees the smoke,
still issuing, from his neighbor's loose hinges. It's dark
smoke, and he worries that the hotel will burn down.
Instead, it's the private falling asleep with ash
in her throat, the cigar half-doused in a glass
of forsaken brandy, the remains of victory
smoldering until the television, automatically,
goes quiet.