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Ode #4 to Dive Bar City

Kenneth DiMaggio

A rosary
A Scapula
Or the medal of a saint

—before you left
for the Big One or Korea
—’Nam
and even the first one
in the Gulf

you left this memento
for the bartender to hang
and later for you to re-claim

But some didn’t

And was the oxidized
necklace with a crucifix
hanging above the register
at Finnegan’s unclaimed
by a Marine who never
made it back from Iwo
or Okinawa?

The St. Christopher
medal still waiting
at the V.F.W bar
for a neighborhood kid
to come back from Saigon

—or even some pagan rope
necklace for some concert
like the Dead
(just come back safe son)
just in case any of you
miraculously return
to claim what got harder
for us to look at
as the wars faded

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