In Service
The former Marine with a zipper scar curled around his ear
like a topographical map charting a river said he once had to
explain to a Texas farmer during a 4 AM training exercise
that those men dropping from black helicopters in his fields
were U.S. Marines but the government was not coming
for his guns or land even though it did look just like that.
He also says every time he goes to the VA he has to explain
to someone, “No, you need to calm up,” and they eventually call
security to prove his point. But people don’t laugh at that one
much. They get nervous at the truth in the joke, noting the scar
signifying where the desert and sky flipped positions on his Humvee
and a roar contained in a silver metal seed dropped silence in his ear.
At Costco he profiles shoppers and extrapolates, from
the combinations of necessities and treats, how quiet
their houses must be when they’re alone and he watches
the shoplifters, knowing, like them, they are owed something
somehow even if no one else knows and their nihilism
holds more ambiguity or creativity than that of the polite
neurodivergent Bartlebys in work polos who won’t bluntly
say no one should kiss ass for a living so they stock and mop
in wordless dull protest. Reality happens only within language.
Which is why his old Bugs-Bunny-with-a-blunt tattoo now
also quotes Gadamer: “The obedience for true authority
is neither blind or slavish,” in a new, darker blue.
Zak Mucha, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst and president of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. He spent seven years working as the supervisor of an Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) program, providing 24/7 services to persons suffering from severe psychosis, substance abuse issues, and homelessness. He is the author of Emotional Abuse: A Manual for Self-Defense as well as two collections of poetry.
