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Costume (Mike, Cambridge)
Vijay Iyer
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There is a photo of me as a knight at four with Jonathan the Mormon
Then at five as General George Washington
At six I am a union soldier surrounded by Frankensteins, wizards and spidermen
I am the serious boy saluting Halloween
Then I am ten, I look more like twelve, my face a terrible grimmace
Gun barrell towards the lens, my version of a Gurkha, too close to Vietnam
Perhaps it was the last shot
That convinced my mother, formerly an athiest, to become a Quaker
That from the age of twelve she and I would sit in square pews and wait for a voice
A difficult task in talkative Cambridge with slightly differing opinions on the US and Honduras sanctions on South Africa
Someone once actually said, "I am sensing that God would not improve of invading Granada."
Yet there were times when everyone said nothing
Only our ... the creek of oak voicing our weight
Even though my mother told me from the time I was five there would be no more war
On my eighteenth birthday she drived me to the meeting house as if I were five
Nearly holding my hand and then to the crowd floor
There, I was registered conscientious objector
I will not give one son to fight in their wars
Not one son to fight in the wars
There are no photos of me in uniform from 82 on
There are pictures of children
Black soldier's children
My son holds as stick as one carries a gun
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