In his poem “Song of Napalm,” Việt Nam War veteran Bruce Weigl imagines standing with his wife and watching horses meander peacefully through a meadow, mist kicked up around their hooves, a bucolic scene until unbidden sounds...

We would take a 6-by truck into An Tan from Ky Ha, to buy soda or beer or sex. A line of little thatched-roof kiosks, some of them walled with flattened beer cans from our trash dumps, strung along a dirt road rutted with...