WEBVTT

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"Let this be the body through
which the war has passed."

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Frank Bidart.

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"Drone."

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"somewhere I did not
learn mow down or mop up.

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somewhere I wouldn't hear
your father must come with me

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or I must fingerprint
your grandmother can you

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translate please.

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the FBI has my
cousins' computers.

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my father says say whatever
you want over the phone.

00:00:36.250 --> 00:00:38.420 align:middle line:84%
my father says don't
let them scare you

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that's what they want.
my mother has a hard time

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believing anything's bugged.

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my father and I always talk
like the world listens.

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my father is still on the
bus with contraband papers

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under his seat as uniforms
storm down the aisle.

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it was my job to put
a cross on each home

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with dead for clearing.

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it was my job to dig graves
into the soccer field.

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I wrote red tracksuit.

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I wrote Shahida, headless,
found beside Saad mosque. buried

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in the same grave as the above.

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I wrote unidentified fingers.
found inside Oldsmobile car.

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I wrote their epitaphs in chalk.

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from my son's wedding mattress
I know this mound's his room.

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I dropped a knee and
engaged the enemy.

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I emptied my clip
then finished the job.

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I took two steps in
and threw a grenade.

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I took no more than two steps
into a room before firing.

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in Haditha we cleared home--

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we cleared homes
Fallujah-style. my father

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was reading the Koran when they
shot him through the chest.

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they fired into the closet.

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the kitchen.

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the ninety-year-old
standing over the stove.

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just where was I.

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una a una tu cara en
todos los buses urbanos.

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Here lie the mortal
remains of one

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who in life searched your face.
call me when you get home.

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let's miss an
appointment together.

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let's miss another flight
to repeated strip searches.

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that Haditha bed.

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with magenta queen sheets
and wood-shelved headboard

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and blood splattered up
the walls to the ceiling.

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they held each other.

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they slept on opposing ends
wishing one would leave.

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mother doesn't know
who I am anymore.

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I write Mustapha Mohamed
Khalaf, fifteen months old.

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I write Here lies an unknown
martyr, a big security

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guard with a blue shirt,
found near an industrial area

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with a chain of keys.

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Martyr unknown, only bones.

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they ask if I have anything
to declare then limit

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my response to fruits and nuts.

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an American interrupts an A
and B conversation to tell me

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you don't have to do anything
you don't want to do.

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he strikes me as a misstep away
from she was asking for it.

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what did you expect after
fishing Popov from a trash

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bin. what did you expect after
accepting a marbled palace.

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they dragged the man who
killed my uncle out a hole.

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they inspect him for ticks
on national television.

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no one in my family celebrates.

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when FBI knocks I
tell them I don't

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have to do anything
I don't want to do

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and they get a kick out of that.
she just laid there and took it

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like a champ. she was
dying for it. at a protest

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a man sells a shirt that reads
My dick would pull out of Iraq.

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my mother tape-records
my laugh to mail

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bubble-wrapped back home.

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my mother records me
singing Ye shabe mahtab

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mah meeyad to khab.

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I am singing the moon will
come one night and take

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me away sidestreet by
sidestreet. sitting

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on a pilled suburban
carpet or picking

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blue felt off the hand-me-down
couch. the displaced whatnots.

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I practice the work of worms.

00:03:38.340 --> 00:03:41.100 align:middle line:84%
how much I can wear away
with no one watching.

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two generations ago my
blood moved through borders

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according to
grazing and seasons.

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then a lifeline of planes.

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planes fly so close to my
head filled with bomblets

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and disappeared men.

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scaffolding sprouts nooses
sagging with my dead.

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I burn my finger on the
broiler and smell trenches.

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my uncle pissing himself.

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shopping bags are legs. there
is half a head in the gutter.

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I say Hello NSA
when I place a call.

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somewhere a file details
my sexual habits.

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some tribunal may read
it all back to me.

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Golsorkhi, I know the
cell they will put me in.

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they put me onto a crooked
pile of others to rot.

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is this what happens to
a brain born into war.

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a city of broken teeth.

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the thuds of falling.

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we have learned to sing a
child calm in a bomb shelter.

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I am singing to her still."

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