Thomas Locicero’s most recent poem to appear here was “The Rest of the World” (March 2018). 

A Good Man
By Thomas Locicero

He had a reputation as a good
man, even as a boy, by what he would
do as opposed to what others his age
would not do, and back then he had no rage
until the images of Pearl Harbor
made their way to him and he joined the war
the way others got on line at a fair
to ride a rollercoaster through the air,
and as they believed it would stay on track
so he too believed he would soon be back,
and he was but not without shrapnel scars
that pinked his shins and led him into bars
where, determined to drink as much as he could,
ignored the young boys in the neighborhood
who, once determined to be just like he
was, found lesser men they preferred to be
because they saw something he had not learned:
he had come back, but he had not returned.