Look

It matters what you call a thing: Exquisite a lover called me. Exquisite.

Whereas Well, if I were from your culture, living in this country, said the man outside the 2004 Republican National Convention, I would put up with that for this country;

Whereas I felt the need to clarify: You would put up with TORTURE, you mean and he proclaimed: Yes;

Whereas what is your life;

Whereas years after they LOOK down from their jets and declare my mother's Abadan block PROBABLY DESTROYED, we walked by the villas, the faces of buildings torn off into dioramas, and recorded it on a handheld camcorder;

Whereas it could take as long as 16 seconds between the trigger pulled in Las Vegas and the Hellfire missile landing in Mazar-e-Sharif, after which they will ask Did we hit a child? No. A dog. they will answer themselves;

Whereas the federal judge at the sentencing hearing said I want to make sure I pronounce the defendant's name correctly;

Whereas this lover would pronounce my name and call me Exquisite and lay the floor lamp across the floor, softening even the light;

Whereas the lover made my heat rise, rise so that if heat sensors were trained on me, they could read my THERMAL SHADOW through the roof and through the wardrobe;

Whereas you know we ran into like groups like mass executions. w/ hands tied behind their backs. and everybody shot in the head side by side. its not like seeing a dead body walking to the grocery store here. its not like that. its iraq you know its iraq. its kinda like acceptable to see that there and not — it was kinda like seeing a dead dog or a dead cat lying —;

Whereas I thought if he would LOOK at my exquisite face or my father's, he would reconsider;

Whereas You mean I should be disappeared because of my family name? and he answered Yes. That's exactly what I mean, adding that his wife helped draft the PATRIOT Act;

Whereas the federal judge wanted to be sure he was pronouncing the defendant's name correctly and said he had read all the exhibits, which included the letter I wrote to cast the defendant in a loving light;

Whereas today we celebrate things like his transfer to a detention center closer to home;

Whereas his son has moved across the country;

Whereas I made nothing happen;

Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a THERMAL SHADOW, it appears so little, and then vanishes from the screen;

Whereas I cannot control my own heat and it can take as long as 16 seconds between the trigger, the Hellfire missile, and A dog. they will answer themselves;

Whereas A dog. they will say: Now, therefore,

Let it matter what we call a thing.

Let it be the exquisite face for at least 16 seconds.

Let me LOOK at you.

Let me LOOK at you in a light that takes years to get here.

During the war, we felt the silence in the policy of the governments of English-speaking countries. That policy was to win the war first, and work out the meanings afterward. The result was, of course, that the meanings were lost.

— MURIEL RUKEYSER

    BATTLEFIELD ILLUMINATION on fire     a body running

    PINPOINT TARGET ONE one lit desk lamp
    and a nightgown walking past the window

    LAY down
    to sleep the
    to rest last night
    to waste before
    across a stretcher
    across a shoulder
    over a leg
    beneath an arm
    in a shroud
    in a crib
    on top of a car
    chained to a bumper
    beneath a bridge
    in town square
    in the fountain
    in the Tigris
    under water boiled from smart bombs
    in a cellar
    in backseat counting streetlamps strobling overhead
    under bomblets
    under tendrils of phosphorus
    in a burnt silhouette
    on a cot
    still holding your breath
    beneath dining table
    beneath five stories
    in a hole

    CONTAMINATED REMAINS wash hands before getting in bed
    eave interrogation room before answering cell
    each your mouth to say
    TL[honey when you enter the kitchen

    DAMAGE AREA does not include night sweats
    or retching at the smell of barbeque

    DEAD SPACE fridges full
    after the explosion the hospital
    places body parts
    out back where crowds
    attempt to identify those
    who do not answer their calls
    by an eyeball
    a sleeve of a favorite shirt
    a stopped wristwatch

    DESTRUCTION RADIUS limited to blast site
    and not the brother abroad
    who answers his phone
    then falls against the counter
    or punches a cabinet door

Safe House

SANCTUARY where we don't have to

SANITIZE hands or words or knives, don't have to use a

SCALE each morning, worried we take up too much space. I

SCAN my memory of baba talking on

SCREEN answering a question (how are you?) I would ask and ask from behind the camera, his face changing with each repetition as he tried to watch the football game. He doesn't know this is the beginning of my

SCRIBING life: repetition and change. A human face at the seaport and a home growing smaller. Let's

SEARCH my father's profile: moustache black and holding back a

SECRET he still hasn't told me,

SECTION of the couch that's fallen a bit from his repeated weight,

SECTOR of...