The Vietnam Memorial by Sally Bliumis-Dunn

War Memorial, St. Catharines, Ontario, photograph by Lorette C. Luzajic, 2012.

The Vietnam Memorial

I was reading the names,
carved in the black marble
as rows that rose
like a strange city’s skyline.

The columns of their names,
tall, skeletal
buildings with no walls,

rows of letters standing
like scaffolding in the stony

night of the black marble.

I walked along the path;
the grayish-white of my body

floated beside me --–
reflected on the wall,
sliding over their names
like a veil or ghost.

The wall grew taller,
burying me, it seemed,
in the bright noontime air.

I could feel the joining:
the alive and
the not alive.

Sally Bliumis-Dunn

Sally Bliumis-Dunn is the author of Talking Underwater and Second Skin (Wind Publications, 2007, and 2010). She teaches at Manhattanville College and lives in Armonk, New York.