Rachel Zucker
We Told Him We Would Hold Him Forever
some men never wore
uniforms; keep them offshore
shackled to an I-bolt in the floor,
to a different kind of war
he offered to make toilet rounds
so he might see his brother. oh, what a spring
it is, said his brother when he found him.
I can’t tell you, he said, how beautiful
that line of poetry is
in the original.
Rachel Zucker’s latest book, Museum of Accidents, is forthcoming from Wave Books. Language in this poem was taken from the “Habeas Schmabeas” episode of This American Life, 2006.