Afterwards: A Love Poem
That day, we found a moon
of a fish, belly-pocked with
spots, on the lip of the shore. It
was still. It was gorgeous. We
did not know what to do. You
filled with manic hope, looking
for a banyan leaf to carry that
dying into the sea Lifting it as
its white scales drank within
them rainbows. When it fell
you picked it up again. When
the wave carried it and spat it
out again again you carried it.
We learned later it was a blow
fish, a delicacy some places and if
you eat a gram too much of the
flesh it kills you. I held you
that night. How I held you. I
beg you do not be furious
that I wrote about the secret
center between us now that we
are gone from each other. This
poem is at the coordinates of the
shining hole in me, which is you.
War Game, America
-Mock Middle Eastern Village
I. Becoming-Woods
Candied blue domes dream
in the dark while the Crying
Room cools in the night’s black
honey. These woods seal
their branches
around whomever enters. I, an almost anthropologist
jabber in Arabic inside a curious
US military-built Middle Eastern village
with Iraqi role-players acting
out a version of their country, alternately
laughing
and trying
to make money to stay
alive. Raining
again in these woods so the role-players and I braid
each other’s hair under the awning
of the mock
house, and they act out in
Arabic reruns of America’s
funniest home
videos, over tiny
Styrofoam bowls of cinnamon-sweet porridge
made for the Shia holiday of Muharram,
though they are Sunni. Meanwhile, one
role-player exchanges
emails with a training soldier, and they flirt
behind a tree. One
afternoon, a soldier
posts one of my
poems in the military twitter
feed used
in the war-
game to document
developments within
the fictional country. Together inside
we
stand in the leafed chill and he quotes my
line.
II. Former Iraq War Interpreters Role-Play Executioners
Leaves cape
into clouds, we fall upon
us as dew. Stars
smithereen
across the lake. Little war little
~
tin murder: set them up,
knock them down. Unleaf
each life.
Willy
~
holds out his Iphone. “Honey
check it out I played
killed.” In the video where he is fake-
executed, cloaked
~
men brandish guns (It is the
Iraqi role-
players, L. and O., crying
in Arabic): Tell the killer
~
his end is nigh spoke verily God
Almighty. Willy sits within
his role his face
a moon his eyes upturned
hands clasped now shot
two times in the head falling
~
forward. Wasn’t that cool?
Are you writing this down? Write it down I
~
write it. Next to it I write:
“During the actual
war [2003], these fake
executioners worked as interpreters
for the Americans — a killable
choice.” In that time, some of the time,
~
their actual bodies after that act
were dressed by the militias
in newspaper, scrawled with accusations, written
in verse: He who
~
follows them is one
of them Take not the Jews and Christians for your friends
and protectors they are not friends
and protectors to each
~
other And amongst you
~
that turns to them is of them. Brother, look into my eyes
until the act is done.
