Why We Bombed Haiphong

Jonathan Holden

When I bought bubble gum
to get new baseball cards
the B-52 was everywhere you looked.
In my high school yearbook
the B-52 was voted "Most Popular"
and "Most Likely to Succeed."

The B-52 would give you the finger
from hot cars. It laid rubber,
it spit, it went around in gangs,
it got its finger wet and sneered
about it. It beat the shit
out of fairies.

I remember it used to chase
Derek Remsen around at recess
every day. Caught, he'd scream
like a girl. Then the rest
of us pitched in and hit.

-- Jonathan Holden, "Why We Bombed Haiphong," in Jim Elledge and Susan Swartwout, eds., Real Things: An Anthology of Popular Culture in American Poetry (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999), 8.