The President’s New Children’s Crusade

We are the mudweary
bringing the blossoms of death.
We are the Contras, the blessed,
liberty’s torching lames us,
we are the old children.
shredding night’s humid serenity.
bombs unleashed are our laughter.
we are the young men of war.

We are the death marchers
who slink through the mountain,
one endless serpent of soldiers
sent to strangle our enemies;
The president sends us
with his blessing, blesses us
with his sending, blesses
the bleeding.

There is no need for interceding,
for the Sandinistas
are infidels wrapped in red,
red in their wrapping;
rapping on doors in the night.
Contras are the bringers of light
rapoing indoors when we might,
we bring the light to the burning,
always discerning the right,
the right. After the bellies
are emptied of babies,
after the buildings are belching,
their flames springing higher
we scatter, no matter the plunder,
the thunder roars through the dark,
the spark of freedom is lighted,
ignited.

We are innocents marching,
we are the crusaders of death,
new life we bring our nation,
new breath, new salvation our message.
We have the president’s blessing
he sends us the blessing of rending,
his blessing is drowned
in the bleeding.

Detritus

You can tell me
that what happens
PUUUupon the soil
PUUUUUUUUUbeneath our feet
does not matter

that the violence –
PUUUgunpowder
PUUUbullets
PUUUlandmines
PUUUblood spilled
PUUUand rot of bones and flesh
does not affect the terroir

that the terror
over centuries
on land –
PUUUdisputed
PUUUand stolen
PUUUfought over
PUUUconquered
PUUUand lost
is not ad infinitum
buried in this graveyard
PUUUUUUUUUUUUcalled home

You cannot tell me
that what happens
PUUUupon the soil
PUUUUUUUUUbeneath our feet
does not matter

that the battles –
PUUUsweeping or contained
PUUUas enemy or ally
are not eternally captured in the earth
PUUUdust inhaled and ingested
PUUUUUUUUUbut also embedded
PUUUUUUUUUUUUin our collective consciousness
like a rusty compass
nestled in the palm of each newborn child
PUUUUUUUUUUUUits arrow clearly pointing
PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUto the forever trenches
PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUof inheritance.

I can still see it.
I hit him with a burst from my M16.
He jumped up and danced.
Everything gray.
Bamboo stood silent
and lowered its leaves.
The earth stood still.
Breathe! I said.
Breathe!

We hike toward a waterfall cascading
through a split in the wall of rock above us.
A crow soundlessly slices a shadow
across the field of snow.
One breath, and the bird is gone.

At the tree line, the tail section
of an airplane, the metal edges ripped
and ragged, stands shiny in the twisted
alpine firs.
The engines lie in the shallow creek,
water pouring over cylinders.
Scrub cushions one wing, the other
is charred into rock,
the ground littered with pieces
I can hold in my hand:
aluminum with buttons, rivets, zipper
heads, upholstery, and jacket fabric
melted into lumps.
In one, the fingertip of a leather glove,
a bobby pin.
It happened in nineteen forty-eight.
A cargo plane clipped the ridge
in a blizzard. Six men died. One woman.
The color of her hairpin tells me she was blond.
The townspeople saw
a fiery flash in a night sky filled with snow.
In daylight, fighting drifts and high winds,
they dragged the bodies out in bags on toboggans.

This would be a good place to leave
your spirit. In the silence,
the wind breathes over the ridge,
and water trickles beneath a layer of ice
that turns blue as it melts into itself.
Gentians and Indian paintbrushes
in the meadow throw their colors
against the rocks.
And the delicate columbine, pale
yellow and pink, only blooms in August.

PUTTTI don’t know whether war is an interlude
PUTTTduring peace, or peace an interlude during war.
PUTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT-French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, 1919

Hurl of metal – iron, steel – as shrapnel,
as bail hail, as HE detonation, all
forged and spit out again with new fire,
matériel barrae, meat-mincer for
extruding the mortal mettle of mere men.
The sowing and the reaping are all one –
short is the harvest of those born to it.
After the wrecking, reaping, reckoning,
all are scuppered on the killing field,
khaki men with hopes of home snuffed out.
Sheaves of men scythed down mid the muck-mire-mud,
bowels churned with the disemboweled earth, red wet.
Gravity flows to the lowest reach, but not
here in the gorge of this blood-gutted earth,
saturated but not satiated.
On and on this crimson stain will drain,
young men will come to fill the gap – futile
like a record where the sylus is stuck
in the groove over and over again –
out of trenches to fatal, final ground.
They die individuals, but banal
as communally their yield is too large –
none a hero in this no-winners game
nor a tragedy – just raw statistics.
All that grieve them soon too, to oblivion.
After this Great War comes the entr’acte
before World War roman numeral II,
just in time for those who survived and bred
to lose their sons in the next harvesting.
Never an end, merely an ellipsis …

The War

“The war continues working, day and night.”
–The War Works Hard, Dunya Mikhail

It has a way of knowing people,
the way a night knows our stories.

Everything’s quiet, then you learn to fall,
deeply. It’s said how you approach an issue

says a lot about you,
PUUUbut how do you approach war?

Everything quiet – almost
at peace – when you learn to fall. Deeply.

And even the night changes its colour.
The dawn is difficult to accept.

Your palms have broken into little chips
of stone, which you will either throw

at people or swallow yourself.
In the kitchen, the water’s boiled, the pan

is ready for eggs. The child you sent out
to get some bread hasn’t made it back.

In the news: everywhere, the streets
PUUUhave learnt the meaning of blood.

Krakivets, Odyn

I wasn’t a medical volunteer – only came in with a backpack, an overweight suitcase,
all the baggage of the past eight months and a heart to pump into here
the ability to stop someone’s bleeding in whatever capacity and degree I could.

But that would’ve been too much nuance for that moment,
with me just being able to count to not much more than eight in Ukrainian
and the guard’s English and tone more apt to counting to three.

I’ve already forgotten some of the exact nuances of that moment.
Did the guard ask me through the open car door, over the empty driver’s seat in the dark, “What were you doing in Ukraine?” or something more like “What brought you to Ukraine?”

For almost a week? Your first time, with emphasis on now?
Incredulity, perhaps, that someone would choose to come to a war,
unarmed, at least in the Kalashnikov sense.

Was he holding such an automatic rifle, a worn cousin of the one I’d fired       in Texas -just precaution-or was it only a fellow guard I saw cradling the legacy of an empire chasing again the impossibility of restoring itself

by unloading                terror upon
and blasting                    through flesh
of people                           like him or me?

I tried to answer the guard’s questions but he got frustrated
and he waved us on to keep the line of hundreds of vehicles moving toward Poland,
as foreign fire engines and weapons re-supplies for firefights came in the other direction.

And with that, we crossed the line — after the Polish guards searched the car, anyway.
One side, the imminent threat of death from the sky above — and not on the other.

Those night skies, no light on the ground to obscure the stars or guide the drones.
I slept well, except when I cried myself to sleep the last night in Kyiv at the thought
of having to leave you, brother, in all this.

Your big windows in Lviv didn’t bother me much.
Neither did the lights in the sky out your windows in Kyiv,
lights that moved in the darkness.

Elemental

Hydrogen, the sun’s power
sends light 93 million miles
to give life to the sunflower
that stands for hope in all our trials.

Nitrogen and phosphorous, they make the sunflower fields more fertile.
When used in explosives and incendiaries, they add more shock and awe to a projectile.

Oxygen, the spark of life in my lungs.
I would give you the last of it from my chest,
my last breaths, if suited best,
for a continuance of your song to be sung.

Heavy stuff, uranium.
It’s not all gone as quickly as in a flash,
not for many or most.
Did I mention half-life with strontium-90?
Like calcium, it seeks bones as hosts.

Carbon, the basis of life as we know it.
If I had to, could I recall any debt to be owed it?

Could all I’ve ever sent off to be recycled
be traded to rebuild your body, your blood, your soul?
Enough to make you whole?
With enough left over to also recreate the man shot off his bicycle?

Our bonds are strong.
Between two hearts, two time zones.
Subatomic critical mass, but love more than chemistry and physics alone.

All I Can Do Is Watch

It’s 0400
on a bridge crossing over
the Tigris River.
Qayyarah is a town along its fertile banks,
15,000 people call it home.
I wonder how long it has been here,
how many times conquered
and rebuilt.

On the outskirts lies an oil field,
it’s where I live.
The wooden walls
of this makeshift bunker
in the sand
wouldn’t stop an attack,
just slow it down.

Surrounded by blackness,
my mind wanders valleys of homesickness,
forced to breathe toxic air,
flanked by those who want to kill
my invasive body, parade it
through the streets.

A bright light hits the oil field,
shakes the ground.
Movement on the hill to the north—
I call it in.

Orange flames rise in oxygen,
twirl in mirthful celebration,
the smoke swirling higher,
my life forever changed and
all I can do is watch.

No Way to Fight Back

I can smell the exhaust from
the plane that’s taking me home.

Standing in line to board the whale,
maw open wide to let us inside.

Air forming breath in the illume,
I’m done with moons in this hemisphere.

These stars, still foreign to me.
Even at the end, I know I don’t belong

in a land of sharp sand, the broken
glass bowl of democracy.

This land won’t let me leave, though.
Raining metal explodes my dreams of home;

swarming red flames engulf
the surrounding canvas. The sound

catches the light, knocks me flat
to the ground as alarms blare attack,

bullets ricochet off cold slabs.
And just like that, I’m crouched inside,

cold-cocked by the reality of
no way to fight back.

people boats

dreams swell/ lashed to circumstance in Syria/ in Gambia/ launched from Libya in leaky rubber chugs to birdless deep/ chugs w/ floor of feet w/ canopy of arms like 700 starfish sweating/ surfing demons/ keeling keening groaning spinning ferment/ tossed estrange/ the black moon sinking into raucous mucus maelstroms/ cataract of violet distress/ the turbulence of orange sun/ bursting over flotsom/ boats adrift/ boats repelled/ prison haulers fatal w/o water, w/o air fatal in shrieking rescue/ panicked sea/ 10 hours tossed to grief/ where vomit waters sweep the beaches gnawed by ruptured rubber masses/ huddled under searchlights/ infant wish:: democracy

pretending there is garden in the spring, paradise in time

this silk and golden weft that weaves
its vines through field and forest
this intricate design atop a kingdom
of the dying, above the restless thread
of streets, the rot beneath:: Deep
the sleep of mouse and wren, the carcasses
of crickets. The desiccated corpses
of the moths. Beneath the flowers all
dyed dismal, dog and possum disemboweled,
little deer with tongue stuck out, the rat
beheaded, like video of hostage

WHERE WE ARE NOW

Neruda wrote: You are mine; rest your dreams in my dream.
I wish that I could write that to you. I love you that much.
More. But because I do, I couldn’t. Couldn’t possibly.

We are approaching 80; the end is coming more and more into sight—
we’ve begun to feel it in our bones, our throats, even in our thoughts—
and women like you don’t rest their dreams in men’s dreams,
even in macho men’s, like the great Neruda’s. If they ever did.

You and I have had marriages that ended, spouses we watched die.
We have grandchildren, pensions, headaches, joint pains, and regrets
Books we started and will never finish, sweaters we haven’t worn for years.
Life promised so much and has given so much. If not everything.
Some of what we’ve done endures, some disintegrated to ashes, to dust.
You are my star, incandescent, lighting up the inevitable horizon.

As we complete the journey and feel the gravity of the black hole,
what can I offer you now, ask of you, try to provide?
Come in just a little closer and hold me even more tightly.
Walk alongside me, my love. Let’s lean on each other, lean together.
Wrap yourself around me and rest your warm old head on my old head.
Help me to remember. Help me to forget

COURSE CORRECTION

they told me Jesus would save me
but i have done all of the footwork
down here
on the ground
rolling my sleeves up
seeing what i have
a father who hates me
a mother who ignores me
a heart who turns the tenderness of each moment
into a tornado
i do the work
ask questions
write down thoughts
understand learned behavior
question patterns
slowly
brick by brick
i build the church of my own presence
and the altar of my own body

Plowing Water

We return to nightmare
ground, looking over the scene

of the crime, the copper
reflection of little clouds

in the torpid, tainted
canal masking disquiet

and chaos created
in us. Toiling in soft sand

underneath a burden
that would make a mule bleat,

we bitch and moan when told
to drop the rucks. Now we must

dig in, not like blind moles,
but like crippled gravediggers

in broken ground started
by high angle hell. Mangled

sandbags and serrated
pieces of metal pulled from

dirt wounds, also a hand
only missing two fingers.

Using a bayonet,
we bury rancid, fetid

flesh in a hole, puking,
not worried about a name.

Sabat (Loyalty)

Dead bodies stop looking like bodies
after a certain point.

The face, like a popped milar balloon
with all the air blown out the top,

the legs, oddly angled, their bottoms
looking for all the world

like tubes of children’s toothpaste
unevenly squeezed.

No, the dead here never arrive in an
orderly manner, like in the movies.

This is Afghanistan, so they show up
carried in blankets or what’s left

of clothes, bandages waving
like May flags.

But they all go out the same way.

The mullah works systematically,
washing and praying, singsong in his labors.

Next to him, a step back Mortaza watches
them prepare his brother for the next life.

Mohammad Gul was the pride
of Ismail Khel.

Young, handsome, brave.  Funny.
Everyone said he was funny.

You don’t hear that much in Afghanistan,
someone being funny. As they lift what’s left

into the particle board box that looks like
an Ikea desk repurposed

hands seek to guide Mortaza out.  But
he pulls away, he stays.

He watches as they wrap Gul’s head in
cotton and prop it up on

pillows of cheap foam.  They spray him with Turkish
perfume from the bazaar, and then

drape the Afghan flag and the prayer rug over his
box, taping it down with rolls of

scotch tape.  Mortaza sniffs back a tear, both for
his brother and the debt

he knows he’ll now have to pay.  He’s not scared,
just tired, and knows

that somewhere, out in Lakan,  is a man he’s never
met but will kill, as the way demands.

When we walk out, together, my boots slip,
squeaking and squishing on the sodden, dirty
tile.

Surreal Expulsion

PUT—for Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School

Fourteen chairs loiter, emptied, no young bodies
adjusting for the next lesson, hand-raising,
class-clown antic, contemplative talk, pat show
of teen contempt, rhythm beaten with pencil, palm,
bouncing knee, jouncing heal, wise-crack, step
in the impossible problem never to be solved.
Instead, more of the same news, the same vows
taxiing the hellish hallways of feigned intention
but never taking off—the same dazed moments
of the dead. Perhaps their freed spirits now see
through the coal-black tunnel of some eternity
right into the next school’s beehive of victims.
Perhaps they still shadow their three steady mentors
who stood staunch ground in the slow-motion flow
of high-speed ammo. The clip of names shoots holes
clean through law’s callous gut—

PUT_CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCAaron, Helena, and Alex,
Carmen, Peter, Cara, Chris, and Meadow,
PUT_CCCScott, Alaina, Martin, Alyssa, and Nick,
Jamie, Luke, Gina, and “Guac” Joaquin—

PUT_CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCwhose roll call
claims only an absurd third of a minute, while
their totaled lives witnessed nearly 5 thousand
wheels of the moon through some 75 trillion miles.
But unlike the pull of that implacable moon,
the glib fever of ‘prayers and condolences’ can’t
turn the tide of memory’s radiating its fixed
fissures scored by shards of glass and bone.
Here, we’re left to settle the moonscape of Too Late
for those whose expelled footsteps befuddle us.
And lauding immortality soothes no better. We
know we relax at our children’s peril, run rash risk
of shoring up the open/closed-carry-frenzied fight,
take false hope in the bundles of white-washed bills.
Anthony Borges took five bullets to shield twenty
surviving friends, sacrificed his soccer stardom
because somehow he knew what he had to do.
His lacerated back and shattered femur scream
in a language we now must teach across America.

Walter Cronkite left footprints
in the gravel of Saigon
but he didn’t tell you their names
didn’t show you the morning commute
of an accountant in Hanoi

they televise bedsheets
replacing blown out glass
in homes of blown out people
but not the Arab Renaissance Bookshop
which opened its doors in 1966

fire hoses are used
to extinguish human spirit
courage licks the veins like flame
and the only parts of war
they can’t powerwash away
are the bloody crevices
under their own fingernails.

Strip

On my computer screen terror
Attacks and kills and shifts into
What comes after
This strip of neighborhoods or
Houses a hospital hit
Like carved out carcasses of
Dust and dead bodies bloody
And gray bloated flesh
An eyelid stuck a skull cracked
Open
The close weave of a sweater
Knit into the charred skin
Of a child of a child of a child
How this happens
Again and again and again
Arms and legs twisted back
Or out of socket
How this cannot be unraveled
Because war wears
A crown of laurels made out of
Eye lashes tiny teeth
Dead lips a corsage of
Brain matter soft and shot point
Blank or bombed this
Bombardment
Of matter
What should matter but doesn’t.

to forget or not maybe

to forget or not maybe
to fight for memory or not
i’m here i’m she
lying on my back underneath me
blue cherries of bruises ten backs
all pierced by bullets all riddled
no one seems to cry here this defenseless death is unshared with any and all
i look around at people all around still people these old trees outside what a spring so wildly
blooms and dies with a scream
i rise from my knees or maybe just
think that i rise i was a teacher
what remains of the school now
walls shrubs suckle blood from the soil
i taught them to never
kill people and now
i’m face to face
with the killers of children hands and face changed the maples turned perfectly crimson too soon
broke my
spine and soul i would tell them if i still taught never kill anyone
i rise from my knees call out to god
god i accept everything i
understand the end of life
i accept it i am desecrated
why do you punish me
with this life
after death

Grasping the Sky

Inside us: a piece of
sky, blue and rusty,
smelling of winter and
gunpowder.
Who will see us as we crawl, chasing
the shadows of the clouds?
She reanimates the land.

The bombs, and bullets, and bodies took
its breath away and send it straight into cardiac arrest.
The scars of war are on her palms and tongue,
but she keeps going because without the land,
her heart will stop, too.

Land—земля—zemlia: a greenplace, a birthgiver, our bread.
She puts her hands around it and tries to close off
the wounds of horror and destruction and
deathdeathdeathdeath
that the inhumans opened with their hungry teeth.
Sometimes, when the blood stops rushing through her ears
or between her fingers,
she hears the echo of “brotherly nations,” “local misunderstanding,”
“child actors.”
The land moans under the weight of
countless bones.

We carry no
prophecies under our skin.

The silent sky
floods our mouths.
Who will hear us climb up
the lifeless mushrooms?

He rebuilds the house.
A new foundation in place of his ancestors’
home built with tears. The missile took
the walls, but the kitchen table is still
standing in the middle.

House—будинок—budynok: a warm place, a safehold, our nest.
He drinks tea at the kitchen table.
One year anniversary,
he feels the explosions
reverberating through his ribs.
His daughter would have turned three.
His wife would have put a pot of
lilacs by her crib.
He drinks tea at the kitchen table of a murdered house.
It’s hot and bitter, and for a minute, he forgets
a new future of new houses with
no one inside.

Everything we wanted
was in the sound
of the sky without
the stench of corpses.
Who will remember us if
the task ahead will take a generation?

They reconstruct their homeland.
Too many questions, too little time: where
do they fit between now and then;
how do they embezzle millions yet fight corruption
as never before; what are dignity and justice and fairness
if the debris of a shelled hospital hide
the broken pieces of mothers and newborns.

Homeland—Батьківщина—Bat’kivschyna: a free place, a seeing glass, our hope.
They won’t live to see it without blood and tears
soaking its black ground. How do they repair machine-gunned hearts?
How do they rebuild a cracked-open sky?
They reconstruct their homeland as the bombs
try to bring them to their knees. Too many
questions, too little time. But the question,
“Will we live?” is not one of them.
Millions of hands breaking the chains
shout the answer louder than
air raid sirens.

Inside us: a whisper
of summer, when sunflowers
grow from the ash.
Who will catch the birds
pecking out a path between
the sky and wheat fields?

No one. Our wings hold the glory of freedom.

airless embrace

i miss you like i miss the sky
cold so painfully blue
angels must have
dripped blueberry juice
from the clouds
i want to tether myself
to the sky-whispers
embrace them bury my
face into their warmth
but it doesn’t make you here
i stalk the shore scooping
up birds beaks
black with blood
you used your skirt
to wipe off the
red from their feathers
why did you
let go
the earth drinks soot
i’m thirsty for
the sound of
your smile
under the winter sun
on the shore
i pick the nightingales
curl my toes to find
the damper sand
the soft homes of crabs below
i hold the memory
of your hair
between my fingers
i miss you
until i fly out of
the soil’s arms
and the sky
catches me
in its thousand
blue hands

Desperate Need of Help

Luis-Rosa-image

So, This is My Career?

Ecstatic to deploy, I qualify on 9MM handguns—

Battle ready Air Force lawyer to defend both Iraqi and Enduring Freedom

Engineers advance to the front lines:

spend billions, move like lightning, build tents, site trailers,

provide food, water, and air conditioning. Our soldiers’ beddown

enables our fight for Oil

Sign off on this funds request, the Engineers demand

What is our mission? I ask

Make the Afghans modern, the Department of Defense

replies. We will build 200 police stations, use a US blueprint

 to cut costs. The villagers can reign in their warlords

What do the Afghans want? I ask

The US Generals look blank and confused

the second-floor bathrooms flood—the

Afghan soldiers’ Islamic practice of making wudu requires them

to wash their feet in waist-high sinks before praying salah

I fly in a contractor’s Russian MI-12V-5 helicopter to inspect one remote station

for future construction claims. Are there any? I ask

We bribe the local warlord—to keep the peace, the Lieutenant says in a whisper

AMPHIBIOUS

In Hokusai’s “Kanagawa Wave,” the boatmen
look like a school of masquerading fish
about to disappear into the vast trough between waves,
the scene a masque for the knowing seascape.

Underwater, Ahab,
pinned to the great white
creature, like a wave that has
disappeared into silence.

In memory’s slow dancing,
flesh now dissolved,
seafloor muck covers bones
and shark-tooth nodules.

Out of the bubbling methane,
Ahab is reborn with tripod limbs
and tiny feet, the wooden leg
now a trail of seafloor slime,
amphibious.

There Will Be No Irish Pennants

“Discipline organizes an analytical space.” [1]

Field Day & Inspection.

Windows shut blinds open half-mast.  Sinks will be bleached, faucets are to be
pointed outward, and aligned.  The toilet paper roll will be full.  The shower handle
will be left facing directly down towards the shower floor. Waste basket will be
empty, cleaned out with no stains or markings, set between the secretary and the
window, where the front corner meets, farthest from the door.

Beds will be made showing eighteen inches of white; six beneath and twelve above
the fold.  The ends will be neatly tucked at a 45 degree angle.  One pillow will be
folded once and tucked in the pillow case.

A shoe display will be at the foot of the bed and will consist of one pair of jungle
boots, one pair of combat boots, go-fasters and shower shoes, in this order.  All
laced left over right.

Each lock will be fastened on each locker and secretary, all set to ‘0.’

Inside one wall locker, hanging up there will be: one all-weather coat, one wolly
pully sweatshirt, one service ‘A’ blouse, two long sleeve khaki shirts—pressed
with the arms folded inward, four short sleeve khaki shirts, three cammie blouses,
two pair of green trousers, three pair of cammie trousers, and one pair of dress blue
trousers, in this order.  All shirts will be pressed and buttoned up.  All trousers will
be pressed and folded over.  All clothing will hang facing right.  All hangers will
face inwards, separated uniformly by one inch.  On the shelf inside the locker,
starting at the inner most edge, there will be six green skivvy shirts and three white
skivvy shirts—folded into six-by-six squares, six pair of underwear folded three
times, six pair of black boot socks, folded once.

The markings will be last name, first name, middle initial, stamped on white tape,
no ink spots or bleeding.  All collared shirts will be marked centered on the collar;
on all trousers and belts on the left inseam, upside down so when folded over they
read right side up.  On all underwear markings will be centered along the rear
waistband.  On all socks markings will be on the top of the left sock.  All covers
will be marked on the left inner rim.

On top of the wall locker covers will be placed, from left to right as staring at the
wall locker, one barracks cover with service skin, one piss cover, one utility
cover—pressed and without Irish pennants.

Irish pennants are not permitted.

Stand up straight.  Arms to your side, thumbs along the seams of the trousers,
shoulders back, chin up.  Heels and knees together, with feet pointed outwards at a
45 degree angle.

Eyes.   Click.
Ears.  Open.

Attention.

[1]  Michel Foucault. Discipline and punish. 143
[2]  Two faucets in each barracks room.
[3]  Irish Pennants are loose threads or strings coming out from the stitching.

RABBIT TRAILS

in the Texas dust. We’re flat in the dirt

so we can poke around down there with a long stick,
while above us bullets fly and children

hold up their honor roll certificate shields.
You say blankets are the answer,
and backpacks and better officers and armed teachers

and doors that shut like Vegas vaults to keep your money safe,
keep your money safer than my child.

I forgot what we were talking about.

messages from below

the radio signals emanated from the depths
commuters puzzled over the whistles and squawks
that cut through their favorite programs
cryptologists went to work

but the waves soon turned to beams
tunnels of coded energy
aimed not at humans
but at a point somewhere near Wolf 359

first assumed to be a submarine human colony
but scans showed no excess carbon emissions
so dolphins were next guessed to be the cause
no one suspected the humpbacks

as the oceans acidified and the air warmed
the whales were busy
at last their solar ships rose from the sea
and the whales ascended

as if rungs laddered from deep to deep
born of the sea they swam among stars

Poem for the Reader Who Said My Poems Were Sentimental and Should Engage in a More Complex Moral Reckoning with U.S. Military Actions

Today I didn’t say divorce
PUT_because I was sickened by
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAthe news
from Afghanistan, translators and their families
PUT_CAAAAleft waiting at the gates,
while American personnel
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAlifted off
in the wide indifference of their transport planes.
I said divorce because
PUT_I hadn’t made room
PUT_AAAAAAAAAin the cabinet for my husband’s things,
and he was angry
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAI did not leave
a vacancy for what he carried home from war.
I was tired of him
PUT_stacking bowls
PUT_AAAAAAAAAon the top rack of the dishwasher,
a policy
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAI can’t abide
when the lower rack is an open country
PUT_waiting to be washed clean.
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAForgive me, reader,
for the weakness
PUT_AAAAAAAAAof my marriage.
I didn’t say divorce
PUT_because my husband would rather a drone
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhover above
a wedding procession,
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAthe party far below,
embroidered dresses glinting, small mirrors sewn into the hems.
He prefers the drone
PUT_fire from a distant, unendangered screen.
PUT_CAAAAAnd I believe
killing should come
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAwith a risk of dying for the killers.
But that’s not why I said divorce.
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAForgive me, reader, for the poems
of shelf space and kitchens.
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMarriage is not
two ideologies fighting at a table,
PUT_CAAAAwhile the soup goes cold
on the spoon.
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMarriage is two people
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAshouting about spices,
the ordering of jars—by alphabet or continent—
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAas if everything depends
on an ounce of turmeric fading
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAunder glass.
Perhaps, I said divorce
PUT_for all the wrong reasons.
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAForgive me
for scrubbing the pot with a bristled brush.
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMy fury
at the gold-stained enamel
is almost the same size as my rage
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAthat somewhere a helicopter
strikes on civilians in the dark.
PUT_Forgive my sentiment.
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAll I can do is keep scraping
the dried burning from the pan.

Epic War Poem

What else but a soldier raging
by his shield. What else but the dutiful.
What else but a battle muralled on a wall,
and Troy a piece of artifice to gaze upon.
What else but the voice a garment
shredded in its grief. What else but ash.
What else but men on wooden ships for centuries.
Their keening is an arrow to the throat.
What else but kings. What else but
the trebuchet of years. What else
but sawbuck fences leaning near a field.
What else but America. What else but
daguerreotypes, a line of corpses posed
within the frame. What else but the guns.
What else but the trenches stuck with mud.
What else but modernity and the long
parade of after. What else but cinders
mixed with milk while the gone are drifting,
processed into smoke. What else
but the skirmishes of scholars,
that language is too little and too much.
What else but brief eras of indifference
when the dead are left alone. What else
but the forged and hammered thing
of poetry, all the failures of our making.
What else but the litany of bombs.

Tyrian Purple

Please, understand: to heave Hector
through the dirt, Achilles must first
cut holes in his enemy’s heels,
Hector threaded like a needle
with leather cord and tied to a chariot
that will pull him around the walls.
Imagine a body strong enough
to be strung like this. Imagine such
stitching is an art, and we call it battle.
Andromache deep in the palace
is weaving a cloak on a wide loom,
wool like the amethyst shadows
beneath her eyes, that vivid sleeplessness.
She’s tacking flowers to the fabric
when she hears the weeping everywhere in Troy.
The bobbin unspools from her fingers
because the warp is a place of order,
and death the cutting shears.
It’s understandable why Andromache
would sit at the loom for hours,
rectangular world where nothing extends
beyond the cloth’s perimeter.
At this point in the war, everyone has lost
the thread of narrative, any reason
beyond armor and the carrion birds
with their beaks like sharpened secateurs.
Who wouldn’t want to take up some craft,
pottery, perhaps, or painted scenes
on funerary stones. Don’t hands need
occupation when the city is besieged.
Probably, a reader believes it frivolous—
these fibers dyed the plum of galaxies,
all that great, oppressive sky
and the murdered looking down
from their fixed constellations.
Even Andromache finds a pastime.
It’s late in our history to condemn
the ways people spin out a war,
how they twist the days like fibers
on a spindle. Imperial purple.
Purple of bruised loyalties. Unfadable
purple that stains the maker’s skin.

SOME FINAL NOTES ON ODYSSEUS

                                                Ithacans!
Stop this destructive war; shed no more blood
and go your separate ways, at once!
            – The Odyssey, 24.531-533

When the goddess cries out,
her voice is a mountain against
the fighting. But the old soldier
keeps running—war like weather
in his ears, a summer storm,
in his pulse the tossing waves.
At such a time it is difficult to see
Odysseus was a child once.
He learned from his father
the names of trees, the orchard
full of gleaming suns called apples,
the private ripeness of figs, grapes
clustered like families on the vine.
He touched their dusty skins.
Yes, even he had been a boy
who held a wooden sword,
the shadows creeping on, and
they lengthened with the night.
There are decades of water,
islands and islands between
that child and the man.
The body is said to harden,
the heart of course as well.
For someone like Odysseus anger
is an unrestricted flame.
When the goddess cries out
she is saying, worship reason
instead. But it takes her own father—
a god and his thunderbolt
—to cut through the battle.
Stop this war, he says.
According to the story, Odysseus
lays down his weapons then.
And what then? What then?
Poems always end before the peace,
the orchard overgrown now.
No one wants to read a scene
of the old soldier pulling weeds,
pruning the wildness back, his arms
still strong but not with violence,
and the air no longer stings
like lightning touching down.
No one wants the old soldier slicing
a plum the way he used to take
his dagger to the belly of a rival,
the war that fed him once a taste
he barely can recall. Most nights
his chin is red and syrupy with juice.

NAUGHT

There is naught to be done for it:
We are over
As the ocean is over its attraction
And is now crawling
Back from the shore,
Having fucked it thoroughly.

We are done
Like steak on a grill,
Sizzling and aromatic,
Waiting to be devoured.

We are finished
As a wood floor sanded to undeniable
Smoothness and shine,
A surface of beauty concealing
The pitted underbelly of it all.

Or like promising to explain to others
What happened to us.
Over, done, finished,
Is all we need to say
Or want

While the gifted interpreter
Turns a pirouette of words
And keeps you safe
With her basket of naughts.

SOUNDINGS

Things,
your black b-ball shoes,
loose-laced, open-tongued,
curse one corner;
your books, benched, titles turned down;
your trophy array, glitterings speechify

—steering far from the sirenic
roar of your closed room—

The tulips drip,
yellows slackening,
some randomly red-lined
with a quirky genetic scrawl,
into a drinking glass
you left …

Listen, all I can do
is endure for a word
in edgewise.

However I heave and haul,
the lines come back hooked empty.

So fuck it,
boots, shoes, shirts, books
Throw them all in
the hole in me,
landfill in
free fall
spiking off
the split bark of winter trees
down fire-escaped stories
through the uneasy laps of whitecaps,
to thud some sandy bottom
where you came to tossed rest.

Such depths, no fathoming?

Cactus Tuna

A semi-sweet taste
of watered-down nectar
bleeds out from the prickly
pear nestled
PUT_Aon a crown of thorns.

In the desert you once
sneered over rifle sights
at the farmers drawing
PUT_Arakes over the sun-
baked ground, and now,
PUT_Aas atonement
you’re a farmer of rocks
and what comes with them.

Stained fingers tear through
leathery skin. Sometimes you
forget you’re standing
alone in a cactus patch
PUT_Ared trickling down.

Grace is not this –
living on what grows where
nothing had a right to grow,
seeds fine as sand
PUT_Ahide between teeth.

And crows, refusing to starve,
land unafraid, pick through
the rinds, eat, take flight
scatter seeds on rocky places
PUT_Aand among thorns

even on tops of walls,
and maybe it’s resilience
PUT_Aor spite
something finds purchase here.

We Return from the Holy Land. God Stays.

The mystery is often in the gaze of men
and women waiting for the sky to speak.

We used to spend days in the desert
waiting until the sky whistled and then
we wished we hadn’t.
Someone’s former
home, now sharp edges of cinderblock
cut upward through our soles. We kept
walking through the desert; everything
radiated, catching us in the crossfire.

* * * * *

We spend days in the Hill country
beneath a blistering sun, a clean sky,
traces of blue that have faded,
burnt off but for the edges by noon.

‘Say something,’ we shout in our minds,
looking up as if it’s God.  Eventually
the sky speaks in the language of wind,
fear fills our hearts. Still, we knew
it would be this bad, yet wanted so much
to feel something – until the moment we did.

Run in Reverse

In dreams the ball bearings and nails and flame
are sucked backwards out of the truck, along
with the screams, and the shrapnel enters
The IED, a makeshift paint can half buried in sand.

The boy’s face heals, his body slides back
into the passenger seat and after a momentary
glare at this pained country he turns and smiles
at the driver. It’s a calm hundred-degree morning
and the Baghdad street is filled with shoppers
carrying bags, laffa bread, eggplants poking
out the top, Turkish vendors serving doner kebab,
their angry looks toward the truck
have softened now and they’re joking.

***

Some days walking with my wife, I turn,
walk backwards just to say something silly.
It’s that moment that seems truest. She is
looking at what’s to come just beyond my shoulder,
no regrets about the past, and I’m trying to hold
on to what we left, moving against my will
into the future blind, the scene I’m trying
to make sense of, moving farther away.

my brother, the Marine

the recruiters come weeks earlier than agreed—
arrive in alloy, aluminum with authority,
military vehicle blocks our driveway
announcing to the neighborhood
they’ve come for a boy here
who will have to go—
though he sits at the top step
and cries

i follow them,
strange convoy to Staten Island’s hotel
where all the boys are corralled—
farmed for war, becoming weapons
of mass destruction
when before they picked apples
at family trips upstate

a hotel lobby—last stop before using lasers
to blow off golden domes,
silence muezzins in the crush
of ancient wage and plaster—
Hussein’s old siberian tiger left thirsty,
watches other zoo animals
being eaten by the faithful—
just like a video game

i clamp onto my brother
beg him not to go, we could run away
he didn’t have to do this—
recruiters quickly camouflage me,
am dragged outside—my brother lost
did not say goodbye
or even look at me.

my brother’s shoebox

the room across the hall is inhabited again,
home now from another tour
like sightseeing from a grand canal
where buildings are art
and storied sculptures animate street corners—
my brother returns a veteran.

i want to remember who this person is,
or at least, find out what war has done.

he leaves with friends to drink—
that is still the same,
later tonight
he might howl at our parent’s window
or jump on my bed until the sheets froth,
uncaring and rabid.

but i don’t wait for him to come home
and begin searching the room
that is his again.

it is simple to find
where people hide things—
a shoebox under his bed
that wasn’t there all these years
furrowed by sand
and almost glowing.

i open to find drugstore prints,
rolls of film casually dropped
for a high school student to develop—
silver halide crystals take the shape
of shattered skulls
goats strung and slit
a school made of clay
blasted in the kiln of munitions
“KILL ZONE” painted across its foundation—
each 4×6 emulsion a souvenir
of these mad travels,
kept to reminisce and admire.

my brother’s grenade

my brother’s room in our family vacation home
has embossed wallpaper, indigo or violet
depending on the light that filters through the mountains—
and his grenade in the closet.

i saw it looking for extra blankets,
thought it was an animal resting in eiderdown
kept by my mother in one of her tempers
but it didn’t move
and so
i picked it up.

inhumanity held beneath iron’s screaming core—
a pleasant weight,
like the egg i threw across the street
detonating onto the head of boy
who said i kissed him but i didn’t,
is it like that for my brother?—
fisted mementos of thrill?

seasoned by cedar sachets,
neatly quilted metal shimmered as i turned it
forbidden gem, his holy relic—
i placed it back in the closet and began making dinner,
said nothing.

the slender pin preserves this household
where our family gathers
unknowing a bomb is kept here—
my brother roasts a marshmallow
until it catches fire, turns black,
plunges into mouth.

GNATS

Evening fire sparking over Sutro’s rim,
igniting cirrus dragons drifting away from the sun.
Jules and I, enthralled.
Sitting placid on the stoop outside our home.
Cuddling.

They swarm out of the alley from behind.
Catching us. Latching hold onto each
of our struggling limbs.
Like gnats they buzz: “Faggots!”
Stuff socks in our mouths.
Drag us to dark playgrounds, the depth of sandboxes.

Fists in our faces. Cleats. Blood. Pipes.
Bone splinters under their boots.
Cold chains gird my torso. Handcuffs biting wrists.
One yanks my hair back:
“Look what happens to motherfucking queers!”

They rip Jules’ pants apart. Jules’ teeth buried in cotton.
Fingers splayed, broken. Knees popped out of sockets.
Ass opened.

Laughing. Noses dripping.
One forces my eyelids like a glassless monocle.
Jagged bottle crammed past Jules’ sphincter.
Jules passing out.
Leather circling around. Beating shafts of meat.
Ejaculating on Jules. Laughing.

Jules coughing. Crawling.

As they flit past his sod-bed,
Jules swats at gnats.

MADE HIM STRONG

From an early age, he knew he was not, could not be,
like other boys. He was fine with that. It made him strong.

On Orthodox Easter in Mariupol

We finished our jelly beans
red and yellow, purple, green,
the last bite of chocolate, unaware

that over in Mariupol
on this most holy day
sleepless mothers cradle children
on a steel factory floor.

Christ is Risen!

But in Mariupol people lie crushed,
the crossbeam too heavy,
cold factory chimneys rising cruelly
against the grey sky.

Nobody steps in from the crowd
to carry the cross.
There is no crowd
but circled tanks

in Mariupol.

Where is the Risen Christ
in Mariupol?

Outside the factory
mud is drying, small flowers
pushing up
between the cracks,
the birds returning, unaware

that inside people wait
in darkness,
the factory made for steel,
not people—
they sit
in vigil,
waiting.

THE GODDESS INCARNATES

At midnight, on a seat of five skulls
I worship the slayer of illusions,
The Maharaja (King) gifted me thirty – three
Acres of rent – free earth, (1)
I have planted seeds of your devotion (Bhakti)
In the soil of my bones to perform corpse rituals.
The world calls me mother – crazy and love – mad,
Your status comes alive in my skeleton,
Oh, Mother Kali! Tell me
If the Goddess incarnates.

• – Ram Prasad Sen

COW DUST HOUR

I dwell on the ferocious cremation grounds
Yearning for my Mother Kali!
She carries waxing gibbous on her forehead,
The Sun grows larger in her right pupil,
The Moon drips from the two corners of her left eye,
She burns the demons in the catacomb of her three eyes.
You cannot carry her consort in your palm,
He keeps her love and fury in the ocean of his heart.

I am restless, this longing to meet my
Mother will swallow me.
Oh, Mother! I have transposed to a ghoul
Your disciples are my friends now.
They claim,
Between the day and night –
When twilight rises to the throat of the sky,
The hours of Sun and darkness make love,
There is no period of half – light,
I will meet you at,
The time of Union.

EMANCIPATION

My eyes brim with the weight of dusk,
Emotions conflagrate in my heart
Burning the corpse without fuel.
This dawn I am returning to my house
To constellate my belongings.

The entrance is clouded by the
Scattered scars of my childhood,
Every drawer is sealed with the secrets of
My disappointments.
Today, I let go of my failures and rise
From the floor,
As soot rises from the throat.
With every effort to clean the house
My spine travels to the nucleus of my brain
Showing me the way to the bedroom.

At the bedroom’s door,
I stand startled by the view.
The Mother Goddess is coming together
With the God of Mountains,
Consuming my form and liberating me
From prison.

MATRIARCH

ninth great-grandchild
spits up peas
seventh and fourth
declare themselves winners

I bundle the children into categories
high-shouldered daughters gobble minutes
trikes in the hallway

my sidewinding wisdom
laughs into a hanky

why is it I depend on the perpetual
tweed skirt

try reading
a mother
nursing triplets

attagirl

I suppose getting it right doesn’t matter
pull the flowers from the earth

an isolated pea is a tiny thing

JOSEPHINE MARCUS EARP

cowboys were the bad guys
PUone cow hides behind the last one
it was a bad sum
PUinaccuracies plus chickens

instead traded on horse hooves
kicked up dust and stray dogs

she wanted to be
PUtaken seriously
staked instead a vagabond

her husband’s posture straight to the sky
PUpointing now to the headboard
the tombstone didn’t think of her

left with her own version
they rifle through the undergarment drawer
PUfor the sheriff’s girl

MARCHING: SOPHIA DULEEP SINGH

voice rattles
a high window
the lyric ricochets
then straightens
PUUUUUto the upper register

breath comes
from the diaphragm
for the belters
on occasion
PUUUUUthe belly

trailing skirts out of fashion
wives sing wild
wrapped in bedsheets
to jump from a crawling baby
PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUis not a dance

talk of a women’s parliament
words are for lemmings
feet do the work
until the pointlessness is stiff limbed
dogged bobbys
the street scuffle an avant-garde
PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUballet

she fell down during the struggle
mud on her dress

ORANGE

It’s June, and a few stubborn ones
still hang on the trees.

We stand on the back of the pickup to pluck one—
so easy to peel, this old girl the sun has sugared
since December’s sharp tang.

Now it’s sweet as honey, sweet as candy,
sweet as that boy child
who wrapped himself up in his binkie,
his raw thumb firm against his upper palette,
who sat on the stairs facing the wall
because I’d snapped at him again.

Why was I upset all the time?

Though everyone forgives me, no one forgets
my acidic past; bright orange, raw rage.

Backyard Apocalypse

We set small bowls of sugar water
on the garden’s edge. Bees were scarce
since the freeze which had almost finished
what the pesticides had started.  Still,
some survived.
PUT_CHARAWe studied the blossoms
of plants, the parts we’d ignored before,
of squash, and peppers, and eggplant
and others. We moved pollen from one
bloom to the next with fine paintbrushes,
working early while the roof still blocked
part of the sun.
PUT_CHARAIt was unseasonably hot
that year, much like other years,
and we walked on the cracks that formed
in the dirt.
PUT_CHARAWas a time when the sweat
of our brow, the smell of our bodies,
made us keep our distance, wanting
showers before contact.
PUT_CThen, something changed .

We began to walk, dirty hand in
dirty hand, lingering in our dry
garden even when the heat rose.
There was so much more to lose.

We could feel the earth slip through
our fingers, still we held tight,
we would carry all that we could.

Hetch Hetchy

There are two signs on
The towel rack.
One says, “cozy” and explains that
The towel rack
Heats your towels.

It’s next to the switch
That fires up
The electricity to the towel rack.
That fires up
The coal fired power plant.

The power plant
Sends up the gas.
Is the drought because the power plant
Sends up the gas?
Either way, there’s a drought.

I looked down through that gas at the
Hetch Hetchy reservoir.
White bathtub rings surround the low
Hetch Hetchy reservoir
Because of the drought.

The second sign on
The towel rack
Says they won’t launder what’s on
The towel rack.
Only what they find on the floor.

All the water in the city comes from
The Hetch Hetchy.
They’re conserving water from
The Hetch Hetchy.
They hope you won’t mind.

Enjoy your hot towels.

“Hetch Hetchy” previously appeared in Eric Chandler’s book Hugging This Rock

Water Cycle

No matter where we are, the oceans
meet us in some form.
PUT_CHARAAAAAAAAI am small
and my daughter (who is only eight) –
is even smaller
PUT_CHARAAand still, our dog is smaller
yet, then there are those microscopic zoe-
and phytoplankton
PUT_CHARAAAAAand the not so micro
fish that eat them and so on
PUT_CHARAAAAAAAAAAAand once again,
oil casts a poisonous rainbow on the Pacific.
Optimism is difficult to catch these days—
evasive like a baitfish
PUT_CHARAAAAAAit’s so small, and we’re
so small, and the smaller we are (like my daughter
who is eight), the more we truly believe
PUT_CHARAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAthis can’t
happen again.

Beatitudes I.

The Lord blessed us with knowledge. Twin curses, good and evil.
Why else plant the luscious tree there, where we were bound
to find the fruit? The purple and shivering flesh never lacks
in spirit. The ache and growl of our naked bellies are the price
for the moment’s delight. So, we gorge and the juice drips
sticky down our chins. Let angels have the eternal heaviness
of paradise; ours is the moment. The act, willful and with intent.
Advised of the penalties. Done poorly. Knowing
this kingdom cannot last. Looking beyond the gardens
for a more convincing view of heaven.

Beatitudes II.

Are we not also blessed, we who praise
PUT_the clear night and its silence?

Betrayed by the absence of stars, we mourn
PUT_a billion-years’ light no longer burning.

We whimper at the withered grass burning,
PUT_the breathing forest burning, the one
PUT_CCCCgreat and living ocean boiling and burning.

You who created time, who is before all things, who will remain after the ruin,
PUT_will you be waiting for us in the cool garden?

Will we lie down with you in the dew-damp grass?
PUT_Will we be comforted?

Beatitudes III.

Are the meek blessed tonight in their bundled and stinking shelters
PUT_beneath frozen bridges? Are they blessed with patience in their waiting
for the Lord of compassion? For the Lord that suffers with?

They suffer together. Their children will inherit the suffering
PUT_of generations,
the split lip of submission, the broken skin of the earth.

Beatitudes IV.

Blessed. From a word that meant blood.
Latin for praise. Blood and praise to the hungry; they are weak.
Blood and praise for the thirsty. For those who bathe
in fetid water.
PUT_CCCCCCWhat are words
to those who hunger in a gluttonous world?
To those who thirst beside the brackish rivers,
choking on garbage? We say, wait for righteousness
to come from above. But they have starved
in their flesh so that our spirits could be filled.

SPIDER / 150

Thick in Louisiana swamps

Atchafalaya Basin

Hot cypress shooting out

Stretching in that bayou

Where pipelines

Pumping black gold oil

Cross across the swamp

Like spider veins.

TRACKS / 151

How I find tiny cuts

The skin of my inner

Thighs outer lip my

Labia

Cuts from his finger

Nails small bloody

Crescents

Like beetle tracks.

SPOIL / 152

Or deep in a swamp

How oil companies

Create canals

Push earth into piles

Push mud into banks

These spoil banks or

Dams

That block blocking

Water so it cannot

Flow.

CLAM / 153

The sky is full of trees

Now after

After he hits me over

The head

With a pipe metal pipe

Hard on

The crown of my skull

Bone and

Suture cracking like a

Clam shell.

Pattern of Consumption is a year long project featuring 365 poems by Amalie Flynn and 365 images by Pamela Flynn. The poetry and images focus on the assault on women and water.