April 30, 2025, marked the 50th anniversary of the end of the U.S. war in Vietnam. The poem here recently surfaced in our files and is so appropriate for remembering…and for today. When will they ever learn?
Hung Wen, North Vietnam: 1972*
By Karen Lillis
During an air raid
an old man
drops to his knees
and opens his heart
to the heavens
in love and fear;
an American bomb
lands there
instead
of god’s whisper
“The family that prays together
stays together”–
he’d been surrounded
by his kin
but in a flash they’re all
dead and gone:
wife
only son
son of that son
He sole survivor
lifts his voice to whichever
foreign correspondent can hear him:
“For the first time
I have hate
in my heart
for you Americans!”
No taxation without representation:
each bomb dropped is
nothing less than
the absent-minded spite
of 12,000 taxpayers
sent into
the open chests
of humbled men
What did you think
a bomb was
made of?
*inspired by a Joseph Kraft report from the New Yorker, August 12, 1972.
First published by Long Shot Magazine in 2004.
Karen Lillis is a bookseller, photographer, and the author of four novellas, including “Watch the Doors as They Close” (Spuyten Duyvil). Her poems have been published by Anderbo, Boog City, Cultural Weekly, Evergreen Review, Night Ballet Press, Potomac Journal, and the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, among others. She currently resides in Pittsburgh, where she runs Karen’s Book Row, https://bookshop.org/shop/karensbookrow.
Len Munnik graphic artist
