Mark Belair


slang

they look like glamorous hollywood publicity stills / these casual snapshots of my courting
parents / taken during world war two

my father in his fresh / white navy uniform / my mother in her dark / cautiously revealing
bathing suit / my father standing rakishly proud / arm tight around a figure cut for him to
remember / as he shipped out a radio operator / on a destroyer / pacific-bound

in a diary she kept while he was away / my mother compiled a list of navy slang / dragging
anchor / for example / meant bringing your wife along / an entry followed by exasperated
exclamation points

entries made so she’d know what my father was saying / when he came home from the war

but my father / upon his return / from post-bomb nagasaki / never used navy slang / he just
resumed / without comment / civilian life

though years later / my sister and i would sometimes hear him / alone in a room / late at night /
tap a table or wooden chair arm / with what sounded like something urgent / in morse code

Mark Belair

Mark Belair’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Alabama Literary Review, Atlanta Review, The Cincinnati Review, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry East and The South Carolina Review. Author of seven collections of poems, his most recent are the companion volumes Taking Our Time and Running Late (Kelsay Books, 2019). He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize multiple times, as well as for a Best of the Net Award. Please visit www.markbelair.com

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