WILLIAM CALLEY’S APOLOGY

by Charles Weld

After reading about his words at the Columbus,

Kiwanis, I counted killers I’ve known, having to guess

at a few, a list longer than expected. A machine gun nest

blown up by a friend’s dad’s grenade. An ex-U.S.

army, Sunday school teacher who would digress

from his lesson to describe the pieces of human flesh

he’d seen, floating in the South Pacific. And, yes—

an uncle, good friend, colleague, clients who’d confess,

needing understanding. Closer, I pay my taxes

without protest, funding the next rampage. Like S.S.,

we lined up women and children and shot them into ditches

at My Lai. Maybe he spoke a word for each, maybe less—

a word for every three or four dead people, the address

brief, according to those who afterward spoke to the press.

Charles Weld’s poems have been collected in two chapbooks, Country I Would Settle In (Pudding House, 2004), and Who Cooks For You? (Kattywompus, 2012.), and in many small magazines such as Southern Poetry Review, Evansville Review, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Concord Saunterer, Friends Journal, Blue Unicorn, Canary, etc. A collection, Seringo, will be published later this year by White Violet Press (Kelsay Books.) He’s worked as an administrator for a nonprofit agency that provides treatment for youth experiencing mental health challenges, and lives in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.