I was washing dishes the day
my brother was slapped into the Army.
Smirking and bold, loaded with
eighteen years of belligerence,
he was lounging at the kitchen table
bad-mouthing my uncle, not there to defend
his treacherous ways.
Mother, always handy with water-blistered knuckles,
knocked Harold all the way
to the recruiter's office.
Afterward, a Greyhound bus
propelled his furious momentum
toward boot camp.
He returned two years later
body-bagged and silent, all rebellion
lost in a rice paddy somewhere in Viet Nam.
Mother cried, but I stood at his coffin
angrily plucking petals
from his spray of long-stemmed roses,
wondering how he came to be dead
from a single slap.
LaVern Spencer McCarthy is a state and nationally awarded poet. She has written and published five books of poetry, five books of short stories and three journals. She is a life member of Poetry Society of Texas and National Federation of Poetry Societies. She lives in Blair, Oklahoma.