Shirt Stained Ochre, and: Civilization and Its Discontents

Abstract

Shirt Stained Ochre, and: Civilization and Its Discontents Lisa Sewell (bio) Shirt Stained Ochre When I returned like the travelerbelonging no more to one placethan to the next and finally arrived at the station that marks the endand beginning of where one of us was from,the border guard intoned: one citizen, one alien pulling us aside to unfold our money beltsand open our trunk, unscrewing the prayer wheelsto flatten out the scrolls of secret writingand secret code within. “Ohm Mane Padme Ohm?” I saidin response to his question. Under a light as white as the unsheltered skyin Fez or Marrakesh, his dogs sniffedamong the ten thousand small paper packagesand unset semiprecious stones I had carried home from Rajasthantranslating us backto the country of my birth. [End Page 155] Civilization and Its Discontents The voices on the radio have nothingto do with weeping for those young menfrom rural areas in the Midwest and the Westwho have access to firearms and drugstores, who fellinto the high-risk categories and throughthe cracks and safety nets, the detailed protocolsof warrior resiliency as those forceswhich ordinarily inhibit ceased to operate. Anyone who isn’t color-blind could seethe red flags: when stateside is a combatzone of sleeping trouble and shortness of breath,when the bullet catcher cannot drivehis Ford Escape along the ordinaryMichigan highway unraveling before himor unmake the jumpiness and rapid heartbeator get those boots off fast enough the first timehe saw the light go out in a good man’s eyes. Troubled by headaches. Troubled by memoriesand checking off “more than half the time”on the mental-health questionnaire(revealing men as savage beasts to whomthe thought of sparing their own kind is alien)every soldier at home and over there is fully versedin suicide prevention trainingin civilization and its discontents. The one who does all the talking says,“you don’t go ask for help because you’d losesecurity clearance, be looked down on, and underminea whole career” and anyway, by then the superhighwayis taking him—the red flags all falling and arriving. [End Page 156] Lisa Sewell Lisa Sewell is the author of several books, including Impossible Object, which won the 2014 Tenth Gate Prize from Word Words Press. She is also co-editor, with Claudia Rankine, of American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics (Wesleyan 2007) and Eleven More American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Poetics Across North America (Wesleyan 2012). She lives in Philadelphia and teaches at Villanova University. Copyright © 2015 University of Nebraska Press