Facing It

Yusef Komunyakaa

• African American
• Served in Vietnam War
• Born in Louisiana

Poem

• Very Choppy, to accentuate his nervousness about visiting the monument

"My black face fades/
hiding inside the black granite..."

The speaker illustrates how his "black face" blends into the monument wall; depicting how close he felt to the casualties etched on the wall.

"...I said I wouldn’t,/
dammit: No tears./
I’m stone. I’m flesh."

He is struggling to curb his emotions as he looks through the names. He feels he should be on that stone too.

"My clouded reflection eyes me/
like a bird of prey, the profile of night/
slanted against morning."

He is beginning to feel a sense of guilt, as if the ones who were lost were looking back at him.

"I turn
this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I’m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names
half-expecting to find

my own in letters like smoke.


,

He feels like a prisoner of the wall; as if the war has taken him back. He infers that the wall is his own personal angel of death.

"I touch the name of Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash."

The speaker is bring a more personal touch to the poem. Exemplifying a flashback that disturbs him

"Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plan in the sky."

The speaker is pondering the depth of the wall as the world moves around him; only distracting his meditation.

"A white vet's image floats
closer to me,
the his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone."

The speaker is inferring that the vet isn't really looking at him but what the speaker experience in the war. This dispiriting circumstance that they share is obvious in their mutual gaze.

"In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair."

He first sees the woman trying to erase the past, but finally sees it as just a motherly act. It is here that he makes a pivotal shift in his emotions about the monument. He no longer is it's prisoner, but just a part of its purpose.