"Let this be the body through which the war has passed."
Frank Bidart.
"Drone."
"somewhere I did not learn mow down or mop up.
somewhere I wouldn't hear your father must come with me
or I must fingerprint your grandmother can you
translate please.
the FBI has my cousins' computers.
my father says say whatever you want over the phone.
my father says don't let them scare you
that's what they want. my mother has a hard time
believing anything's bugged.
my father and I always talk like the world listens.
my father is still on the bus with contraband papers
under his seat as uniforms storm down the aisle.
it was my job to put a cross on each home
with dead for clearing.
it was my job to dig graves into the soccer field.
I wrote red tracksuit.
I wrote Shahida, headless, found beside Saad mosque. buried
in the same grave as the above.
I wrote unidentified fingers. found inside Oldsmobile car.
I wrote their epitaphs in chalk.
from my son's wedding mattress I know this mound's his room.
I dropped a knee and engaged the enemy.
I emptied my clip then finished the job.
I took two steps in and threw a grenade.
I took no more than two steps into a room before firing.
in Haditha we cleared home--
we cleared homes Fallujah-style. my father
was reading the Koran when they shot him through the chest.
they fired into the closet.
the kitchen.
the ninety-year-old standing over the stove.
just where was I.
una a una tu cara en todos los buses urbanos.
Here lie the mortal remains of one
who in life searched your face. call me when you get home.
let's miss an appointment together.
let's miss another flight to repeated strip searches.
that Haditha bed.
with magenta queen sheets and wood-shelved headboard
and blood splattered up the walls to the ceiling.
they held each other.
they slept on opposing ends wishing one would leave.
mother doesn't know who I am anymore.
I write Mustapha Mohamed Khalaf, fifteen months old.
I write Here lies an unknown martyr, a big security
guard with a blue shirt, found near an industrial area
with a chain of keys.
Martyr unknown, only bones.
they ask if I have anything to declare then limit
my response to fruits and nuts.
an American interrupts an A and B conversation to tell me
you don't have to do anything you don't want to do.
he strikes me as a misstep away from she was asking for it.
what did you expect after fishing Popov from a trash
bin. what did you expect after accepting a marbled palace.
they dragged the man who killed my uncle out a hole.
they inspect him for ticks on national television.
no one in my family celebrates.
when FBI knocks I tell them I don't
have to do anything I don't want to do
and they get a kick out of that. she just laid there and took it
like a champ. she was dying for it. at a protest
a man sells a shirt that reads My dick would pull out of Iraq.
my mother tape-records my laugh to mail
bubble-wrapped back home.
my mother records me singing Ye shabe mahtab
mah meeyad to khab.
I am singing the moon will come one night and take
me away sidestreet by sidestreet. sitting
on a pilled suburban carpet or picking
blue felt off the hand-me-down couch. the displaced whatnots.
I practice the work of worms.
how much I can wear away with no one watching.
two generations ago my blood moved through borders
according to grazing and seasons.
then a lifeline of planes.
planes fly so close to my head filled with bomblets
and disappeared men.
scaffolding sprouts nooses sagging with my dead.
I burn my finger on the broiler and smell trenches.
my uncle pissing himself.
shopping bags are legs. there is half a head in the gutter.
I say Hello NSA when I place a call.
somewhere a file details my sexual habits.
some tribunal may read it all back to me.
Golsorkhi, I know the cell they will put me in.
they put me onto a crooked pile of others to rot.
is this what happens to a brain born into war.
a city of broken teeth.
the thuds of falling.
we have learned to sing a child calm in a bomb shelter.
I am singing to her still."