" Propaganda Poster "
In a little antique shop, dusty
as grandmother's bedspreads, I stumble
across a silk-screen print of Ho Chi Min.
In it, he doesn't brandish an AK47
or wear an ammo belt of grenades. He doesn't wave a red flag
splashed with hammer and sickle,
posing triumphantly over the bodies of American GIs.
Like a priest
he leans over
a wooden balcony holding
a basket filled with fish and loaves of bread.
The hungry multitudes
who rush forward through the courtyard
aren't VC scrambling
from tunnels to launch a surprise attack,
but farmers and shopkeepers,
schoolteachers, fishermen who want to touch
the hands that work the miracles of Jesus
to fill their empty stomachs.
Napalm free jungles overflow
around the small group of houses
that border this square of celebrating people
whose faces show no fear of ghosts
dressed in tiger suits
who point rifle barrels
through bamboo like telescopes into the past.
From the planted fields,
the next generation of worshipers
rise: shoots of rice that slowly transform
into people who stream forward to touch his hands.
Above the dirt,
a calligraphy of spiders
spins a trellis of meanings I don't understand.
And it's hard for me
not to think of Washington, Jefferson, or Lincoln,
and the lies that couldn't be told
when the cherry tree fell to the axe,
the coin was tossed across the Potomac,
or the boat crossed the icy Delaware.
A truth lives somewhere
in this symbolism
as the hands of the enemy reach
across the years with food and friendship.
Enough truth
to endure
the shop owner's stories for twenty minutes
about how he bought the poster on one of his failed
trips to Russia, China and Vietnam
in search of a bride to replace his dead wife
before I pay my seventy-five dollars
and drive home through this blood-red sunset of forgiveness.
© 2004 Jim Doss
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