LETTER FROM THE FRONT PRINT

Letter #8

—from the front, date and time undisclosed—

Our unit captain’s from Topeka. He’s strong, horse-toothed, shows The Wizard of Oz when the troops get low. Whistles through those big teeth, talks non-stop about cornfields.  Girls with hair like their silk, the dance they do that makes fields shake loose strands of it. (He reminds me of Annie’s last one—Jason. Jason as a great, blonde assassin.)

It’s been so long since I’ve seen corn, even niblets, freeze-dried, in plastic—but when this captain, my captain, hisses his commands, I see it in the shaved halo steaming around his head. When he’s doing sit-ups, and it’s my turn to sit on his feet, it’s woven in the wet ringlets on his forearms and chest.

Sometimes I imagine him on his belly, crawling through a slippery sea of tasseled stalks, earth so hot, so dry it smells like bread—rooting, rooting, rooting out the enemy.

Originally from Lakeland, Florida, Mandy Malloy is a writer and graphic designer living in Brooklyn, N.Y. She is currently finishing her MFA in poetry at Hunter College while doing a day shift in corporate advertising. Her poems have appeared in City Writers Review and The Whitman Sampler.