His A-6 Boots (Foster Field, Victoria, TX, 1941)

Vincent Hostak

September 1, 2024

At the surplus shop on their own rack

upright in a neat row,

as they were cot side on the barracks floor, 

my father’s A-6 boots

(the ones with straps above the ankles).

They issued orders to add the clasps 

after hundreds of them

descended first from the Texas skies

preceding chuted airmen,

dotting the dunes like wingless shore terns.

The first thing they taught him in flight school

was to turn and shake them,

even before you hit the latrine,

and watch striped-bark scorpions,

tails raised, scuttle off, absent without leave.

The cashier rang me up and asked me if I learned

any stories about the boots.  I said, “I guess, a few.”

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes & produces the podcast: Crossings-the Refugee Experience in America.