One of My Best Friends (i)

from poet David Connolly at Viet Nam Generation Journal 4:3-4

If you have no idea what David Connolly is talking about, good for you. I am not going to tell you. All of us who ever have suffered from that infection cannot be dead and buried soon enough.

Do you laugh as I did when first I read this next one 30 years ago? Is the poem a way out of horror into release as it was for us then? Or is reading it instead a way to learn disgust?

This was the first Viet Nam letter of 3 so far about One of My Best Friends by David Connolly. We sent the second on September 3, 2022 and the third on May 8, 2023. We have posted 1 only on his poem Thoughts on Monsoon Morning, on July 20, 2022 and on the poem Why I Can’t, on August 3, 2022.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.

The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.