Chopsticks
You brought home gifts
from your tour of duty
as if from a pleasure trip,
a mini-camera for Dad,
a scarf for Mother,
and for me, chopsticks from Vietnam.
Two slender, black sticks the color of onyx
glistening in my hands,
each with inlays of pearly shell,
iridescent in marbled gold.
They made beautiful tools for eating —
people forced into famine,
their food defoliated by war.
You choked back that year of jungle sweeps
and body bags, all of it hard to stomach,
but you managed to forage a few gifts,
bringing me jeweled chopsticks,
tools of sustenance,
a souvenir of your survival.
Annette Langlois Grunseth
Published in Bramble Lit Mag, Summer 2017 Issue wfop.org
Dispatches Magazine, Spring 2021
