So one of the things that occurred
as a result of this investigation
was that refugees gave up samples like their urine
samples, blood samples, even their clothing.
And these samples were shipped to laboratories
all over the world to test.
They were mostly shipped to arrive here
to the United States.
But what happened was that when they arrived, most of them
had already degraded.
So it was really hard, at that point, to even figure out
definitively what this toxin was and to really make
a case for what was happening.
And so some of the poems in this collection
focus on that process and the futility of that testing.
So this next poem is one that explores
that sense of futility.
Authorization to Depart Ravaged Homeland as Biomedical Sample.
Flew you afar.
Piecemeal bits of spleen, liver tissues of the second gut
orphaned by the hole.
Routed you in a vacutainer, Bangkok, Frankfurt delayed,
Dulles, Fort Detrick, as if only born to serve in post-mortem.
Detain offerings of cerebral shards
to be juried under a lens flew you
from the silken wilderness of your viscera.
From all the vacated leftovers of yourself,
sinews snipped, culled from the ribs.
In this mission of guilt for your unleaving,
you've trekked far from the village.
Salvaged insides from you and other hundreds
sealed on letterhead, dispersed to the globe.
Here, at long last.
You did not land a body.
Only as a vial of blood were you registered as urine.
Did they label you asylum?
Sample M3582, victim 7, en route to London.
Fluids of you granted fare to enter refugee airspace,
while ending away in a hospital camp.
Stayed behind, the sourced you and every else part.
Sample M2582, victim 9, no weakened career ambiguously
arriving.
So stomach of laments, how could they not get you here somehow?
Only drops relayed from lab to lab to lab.
Cargo of you quaking inside an ice chest.