[Newspoetry] writing assignment

[Sam Patterson]

Hey folks, I found a poem that needs to be rewritten/ expanded:

What Things Are Called
Ercih Fried

Why were you not like Trung Quan?
a girl says

That means
her lover is one of those burnt

The leaves of the tree Trung Quan do not catch fire
like bamboo poles or like human skin

II
Lazy Dog
is the name for an iron cross
between aerial bomb and dum-dum bullet
Safty Detonator
is a peasant tied to a rope
and driven ahead across a minefield

Tug of War
is dragging a prisoner
on a rope
behind a tank
through a village
by way of warning

Bundle
is a corpse
in a plaited mat
Harvest
a row of Bundles
in a field

III
Some things mean as much
as the mood of
a high official or senior officer

And some mean as little
as the life of
a handful of peasants father mother three children

IV
Pacifying a village
means not only beheading
peasants who were suspect or had been denounced

Pacifying also means
cutting out their liver
and throwing it into the air
The liver is the seat of courage

V
Wearing black jackets and trousers
means
being a peasant
Being killed
means afterwards
having been a Vietcong

t.r. Georg Rapp