Shirtless Dusty

 

Shirtless Dusty

I first meet Dusty on a beach
beside the Chesapeake Bay
in this photo where
he’s dating my cousin Liz
who suddenly grew a body.
Dusty’s the one with chest hair.
I’m the kid with glasses.

In this photo Vietnam shirtless again
he’s on a river boat patrolling
writes Stay in college.
Stay the hell out of here.

Next here’s him shirtless and Liz shirted
in the house he restored on steelworker’s pay
building war machines that float.
Bankers stole his pension
when they looted Bethlehem Steel.
Combat memories haunt
while Dusty raises goats
until the city shuts him down.

Here’s Dusty an old man on Facebook
with his face peeling off, flesh
flaking under cammo fatigues
posting paranoid gun-rights crap
so I unfriend him.

Here at the Chesapeake Bay again
Liz is dumping Dusty’s ashes
from a borrowed sailboat.
Agent Orange kills him
though the doctors won’t admit it.
His life like firing a rifle at the sky:
a disturbance the air closes over.
We open our shirts,
we feel the bullet strike.
Here. Right here.

……

First published in Rat’s Ass Review