Facing 2003

by Jeremy Warneke

In a black notebook, hardcover
and college-ruled, Adam
Wobegon, an admirer of Yusef
Komunyakaa, writes the following
in black permanent ink:

My white hand fades,
deep inside the pale blue bucket.
I said I wouldn't
dammit: No washing.
I’m water. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey…
...I turn
this way—the water lets me go.
I turn that way—I'm inside
the wash bucket basin
again, depending upon the soap
to make a difference.
I go down the piles of clothes,
half-expecting to find
my old uniform encrusted in dirt.
I touch what looks like brown Army briefs;
I see the pink bucket's splash.
Clothes shimmer on the line outside…

It’s meant as a joke, but
there it is, staring starkly back
at him. The problem,
the dilemma. Always the same.
To wash, or not to wash:
Out of a bucket?
Adam swore that once he left Iraq—
more than ten years ago—
he would say bon voyage
forever to the tiresome task.
Now divorced and on the verge of
being dumped by
his newly pregnant girlfriend,
Adam concludes the poem—
among other things—by writing:
Once you go Iraq, you don't
go back.

***

Jeremy Warneke is a public servant in the Bronx, New York. He enlisted in the Army National Guard prior to 9/11. In 2016, with the support of the Bronx Council on the Arts, the New York Public Library, Voices From War...and his family, he created his own writing workshop, “The Craft of War Writing,” which provides free, high-level reading and writing instruction for veterans, as well as the general public, based upon the themes of conflict and war.