Sign-Inventory 1, Week 5

Yusef Komunyakaa, "Facing It"

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.    


Lines 1-2:  repetition of the color "black"
Lines 3-4:  colon between vague statement and specified value
Line 5:  consists of two whole sentences--two words each and begins the same
Lines 9 and 10:  vague directions ("this way" and "that way") followed with statements regarding the possessions of inanimate things
Line 14:  specific number of fallen soldiers
Lines 15 and 16:  juxtaposition between "half expecting" and "like smoke"
Lines 17 and 18:  time separated with a semicolon (present; past)
Lines 18 and 25:  repetition of the color "white"
Line 24:  the poem's only sentence fragment--"The sky."
Lines 29, 30, and 31:  juxtaposition between "black mirror" (see lines 1 and 2) with a mistaken description--"a woman's trying to erase names: / No, she's brushing the boy's hair."