Viewer Discretion Advised

Viewer Discretion Advised




The things you find in a dead parent's house.
A silly, seasonal postcard that reads "Florida Beauty"
in red, italic lettering above a topless model.
This could be the Gulf or the Atlantic side, wherever
the everyday heavens of water and sun intersect.
Her arms are neither going up nor coming down—
they remain crossed below the phrase in red. Across
a pair of breasts recalling round, indigenous fruit.
And the look on her face says she'd show you,
but there are rules. The card is stamped, postmarked.
I read: West Palm Beach. Thumb-up the corner edge of
a commemorative stamp of John Wayne in a cowboy hat.
I'd sent the card to be cute. Funny. Something like that.
And to mockingly say "Wishing you a great Thanksgiving!"
when I knew my father was missing the Sunshine State.
My adult nephew is playing Xbox on the floor. Blood arcs
from the hole in an avatar's throat in wave after wave of gore.
Bright. Shining like those rainbows you see in oil on pavement.
I hand him the postcard. Tell him the story and why it was sent.
He flips it to read the back before carrying on in a cyberworld
where there are rules and computer-generated postcard hotties.
And so I'm driving from my dead father's house and a first talk
concerning battlefields with a just-returned-from-war nephew—
I'm calculating how long it would take for a mountain lion to reach
a downed Taliban fighter my nephew says he shot at some distance
near Kandahar. In his story, the man screamed in Pashto at the cat.
Through his scope, my nephew watched as the cat poured closer.
Unlike those Call of Duty scenarios where the shooter is in charge
and viewer discretion is advised, the cries and screams were real.
There is mercy and its equivalency. And this was neither of those.
There are the places that ask to be recalled. This wasn't that. This
was a day in one of the darker rooms of the House of the Dead.


Copyright (c) 2012 by Roy Bentley. All rights reserved.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• twohawksfucking
• Roy Bentley
• Afghanistan War
• Call of Duty
• Florida
• Call Of Duty

[FirstFlakes]

Hi Roy! Jenny Shaw here. Great stuff...Listening to you reading makes me miss you and Gloria and the good old days.

[twohawksfucking]

@FirstFlakes Jenny, good to hear from you. Been a tough year: lost both my parents this past year... No excuse not to at least try and say something profound about stupid separations, for whatever reasons--I could do that. But I'll just say Welcome back!

Best to you, and to Shawn--and the girls!

Roy

[rpVerlaine]

great ending..jarring start original for being borrowed or found, very much enjoyed...the best r.p.

[twohawksfucking]

@rpVerlaine Thanks so much for that, rp.

[andrewnorris2]

Great writing, Roy, I recognised that emotion when cards and letters sent to parents from years ago reappear, almost as one's own legacy. It can be so touching, revealing, to discover what your parents saved and cherished for so long.

[twohawksfucking]

@andrewnorris2 Thanks, Andrew. Tough year, this past one. Lost my mother in April, then my dad followed seven months later. But they had lived a good, full life. Lucky, really.

[andrewnorris2]

@twohawksfucking Thanks for sharing this, my sympathies to you. I know one should feel lucky if one's folks exceed the alloted 3 score years and ten but lose is lose, nevertheless. Though I am sure you take comfort in that they lived ful lives.

[twohawksfucking]

@tinySpectacle You nailed it: it's very much the feel of the inevitability of the choices made that seals the deal between writer and reader, so to speak. And one never knows, does one? Thanks, Lo.

[twohawksfucking]

@SlacktiveInAction I hear that. And I thank you for taking time with the work...

[SlacktiveInAction]

*viewing discreetly.