Rockets' Red Glare by Howie Good

The movie was called To Hell and Back.
He played himself, Pvt. Audie Murphy,
the most decorated soldier of World War II.
On the screen, he single-handedly stormed
Axis blockhouses and machine-gun nests
while lesser men cringed in foxholes or got hit
by bullets and crumpled. I was just an awkward,
chubby kid with awkward, chubby kid problems
when I saw the movie, but I remember it was in black
and white, and that he had a boyishly bland face
and the cold, rageful soul of a killer, and that I wanted
more than anything to be exonerated like him.



Howie Good is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing) and The Bad News First (Kung Fu Treachery Press).