Jessica Ramer
Sole Tattoo
Military brass ordered the airman shipped out—away from plum wine and hot sake, women walking three steps behind men, prostitutes cheap enough for an NCO to afford—to Korea, combat in a frozen peninsula. Before deployment, a military photographer snapped his death photo, one released to hometown papers if mortar fire hit the fortification he crouched behind.
It showed a thin-faced man dressed in Air Force blue, lips bowed in a hesitant smile.
In a tattoo parlor abutting the road leading to Misawa Air Base, a local artist inked O+ on his left bicep even though Leviticus, and his father forbid tattooing. He never saw Korea—he was posted instead to San Antonio—but always saw his lettered bicep whenever he showered, changed, or looked in the mirror. Maybe that is why, even when incoherent with alcohol, he always wore long-sleeved shirts.
ferrocyanide
vowel blue as glacial ice:
Near-war’s souvenir.
Jessica Ramer is a third-year PhD student in poetry at the University of Southern Mississippi.
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