We Call Him "Jim"

We call him "Jim,"
the Vietnam vet
who lives across the street,
dragging his left leg
as if pulling a sledge
through a field of hot tar.

His pension never lasts
the end of the month,
so I see him outside the mall,
his sign announcing —
amid the silence he keeps,
a flame for fallen comrades —

"Buy Flowers From a Vet."
People, mostly from
Jim's and my generation,
drop coins and bills into his jar
in exchange for plastic flowers.

Once, I tried to give him
a five-spot without first taking
one of his dead-moth
explosions of color.

"I ain't no charity case,"
he muttered,
"Take one, or get lost!"

Chastened as if by a drill sergeant,
I plucked a plastic rose: crimson
as the lips of a Saigon whore,
as the memory of dreadful wounds
we hear Jim screaming from,
late at night.

— Robert Cooperman