30 Poems in 30 Days - Seven: Child with Toy Hand Grenade, New York City, 1962

Child with toy hand grenade, New York City, 1962 is the inspiration for this ekphrastic poem.

Amy Newman's ekphrastic poetry workshop from, you guessed it, The Guardian, states that "Ekphrasis is defined as the technique by which one artist responds to another, specifically as a verbal response to the visual or plastic arts."

This photo was taken the year I was born. The Vietnam War was into its third year, and there would be thirteen more before it was finally over. I thought about the war while I looked at Diane Arbus' famous photograph, and also, wondered if this child fought in the war.

Just found this! Colin Wood is the subect of the photograph. Mental Floss, quite possibly the coolest magazine ever, features a brief article, and you'll have to scroll way down on The Year in Pictures blog to read more about Wood. As for the question I posed earlier as to whether Colin Wood fought in the Vietnam War, well, he attended prep school, so I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that he did not.

Diane Arbus is one of my favorite photographers. I believe you can know the artist by looking at their art, since all art is pretty much a mirror of what the artist "sees", what the artist "renders visible", as poet Hoawrd Nemerov explains in his poem, The Painter Dreaming in the Scholar's House. I also thought about the sad fact that Arbus would take her own life before the war's conclusion.

The and babies alludes to Ronald L. Haeberle's photograph of the My Lai Massacre, and frag is short for for fragmentation grenade, and for fragging, which the freedictionary.com defines as, To wound or kill (a fellow soldier) by throwing a grenade or similar explosive at the victim.

Child with Toy Hand Grenade, New York City, 1962
Danna

a toy soldier
dappled light falling like napalm
plays war in Central Park
poses for the lady
and her camera

his thumb pressed
possessively
over the fuse pin

a child mugging
for the camera
his malevolent claw hand
communicating
what can never
be said aloud
speaking angst, the
powerlessness
of being a mere boy
in a world
of men

in the distance
women, children,
and babies
pose lifeless,
nameless in
history's ambient light

three years into
that other war
and thirteen years still
for him to become a man
learn to frag
the enemy clawing
within himself