WEBVTT

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Maybe it's a little
change of pace.

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We'll try that.

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I kind of have to
apologize because there's

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a lot of sort of gallows humor
in the military, you know?

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This book doesn't
have any of that.

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And a lot of the
humor that was there,

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I couldn't find a way to
get it into this book, maybe

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some other book, you know?

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So for me, it feels
kind of unrelenting.

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I come up and read
poems in front of people

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sometimes just like,
bam, look at this,

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painful, painful,
painful, you know?

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But maybe that's what we need.

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I don't know.

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This one's a little
different, though.

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"Last Night's Dream."

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"In the dream, her breasts
become confused in my lips.

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I shoot an azimuth to her navel,
while her fingertips touch me

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with concussions, as
if explosives ring

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through the nerves of my body.

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As if I am strung with
wire, a huge receiver

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of UHF radio transmission
frequency hopping

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with our tongues as we kiss.

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And I slide into her with a
sound of flash bang grenades

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that make her eyes cloud over
and smoke from the heat of it.

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In the dream, she kisses
Arabic into my skin.

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And I understand
every word of it.

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I transcribe it backwards
into cuneiform and stone.

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I rename the arteries and
veins for every river and wadi,

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from Dohuk North to Basra South.

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I feel for this
geography of pleasure.

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My tongue is a marker that
writes even in the rain,

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even in salt and sweat.

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And I write with it now
over every curve and turn

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of her body.

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In the dream, our orgasm
destroys a nation.

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It leaves thermite and
gunpowder in the air above us,

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a crackling of radio
static as we kiss on

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long into the denouement
of skin and fire,

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where medevac helicopters fly
in the dark caverns of our lungs

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in search of the wounded.

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And we breathe them one
to another, a deep rotor

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wash of pain and bandages."

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