Gary J. Whitehead

Aides de Camp

You opened cases, trunks, and bags.
You picked the seams of overcoats.
You cut off buttons, tore off clasps.
You stole the gold from naked throats.

You sorted shoes by sex and size.
You tagged the bundled pants and shirts.
You swept the residue of toys
you’d smashed. You labeled bins like clerks.

You oiled hinges, barracks’ locks.
You fixed electric fences, changed
the bulbs on floodlights, wound up clocks,
and cleared the stopped-up shower drains.

You shoveled coal and coke and ash.
You dragged the corpses to the pits.
Back home, you cooked and did the wash.
You played Black Peter with your kids.

Gary J. Whitehead is an American poet. His fifth collection of poems, Seeing Double (Terrapin Books), was released last spring. His previous collections include Strange What Rises (Terrapin Books 2019), A Glossary of Chickens, (selected for the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets and published by Princeton University Press 2013), Measuring Cubits while the Thunder Claps (David Robert Books 2008), and The Velocity of Dust (Salmon Poetry 2004).