Mark Belair
slang
they look like glamorous hollywood publicity stills / these casual snapshots of my courting
parents / taken during world war two
my father in his fresh / white navy uniform / my mother in her dark / cautiously revealing
bathing suit / my father standing rakishly proud / arm tight around a figure cut for him to
remember / as he shipped out a radio operator / on a destroyer / pacific-bound
in a diary she kept while he was away / my mother compiled a list of navy slang / dragging
anchor / for example / meant bringing your wife along / an entry followed by exasperated
exclamation points
entries made so she’d know what my father was saying / when he came home from the war
but my father / upon his return / from post-bomb nagasaki / never used navy slang / he just
resumed / without comment / civilian life
though years later / my sister and i would sometimes hear him / alone in a room / late at night /
tap a table or wooden chair arm / with what sounded like something urgent / in morse code
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