Stars and Stripes: Neighborhood Thinking (Part II)

My neighbor is shooting fireworks, M-80s
commingling their sharp bodies in the air,
pulling away from the yards and shattering
the stalled birds in big city traffic lights.
He sees himself as something loved,
a goddamn Casanova of contraband
and he stands in the street full of all
his fractured wars
which, he points out, he listened to
on the radio from start to finish
and therefore
was helicoptered right there-
nevermind the bum knee, he says.

He's oddly free
with his hand around the dark rib of a beer.
Just me and him, him the nameless jackass
who had great news about the war,
and me unspeakably untouched,
firing empty and clean, the sky
burned with a print, a brilliant slap in the face.

I watched the lights, his face in the lights,
his mouth suckling his own amazement
and nothing, nothing he says
can touch the birthmark of a country,
like a small stain right
behind the knee, the corner of the top lip,
which drifts into
its own nonsleep once a year.