record-holder. He cannot be beaten.

At least, not by Sawara Mohammed.

Mohammed, at 26, has shoveled cement

longer than he cares to remember. In Arbil,

in Kurdish northern Iraq, he strains hard

to lift the barbell with its heavy plates,

round as the wheels of chariots – then, muscles give

and the wheels bounce in dust before him. No,

he cannot defeat the Bulgarian.

The problem is in lifting weight over distance.

It isn’t a matter of iron, or of will.

In Beijing, Boevski’s records will go

unnoticed, because Mohammed is training now

to lift the city of Arbil, with its people;

his quadriceps and posterior chain

straining, the muscles tremoring to lift

the Euphrates and Tigris both, mountains

of the north, deserts of the west, Basra,

Karbala, Ramadi, Tikrit, Mosul,

three decades of war and the constant suffering

of millions – this is what Sawara lifts,

and no matter what effort he makes, he will fail

completely, and the people will love him for it.

A Lullaby for Bullets

Tomorrow is made of shrapnel

and blood. There will come a time

when the trigger calls you out quickly

to the streets. And as you leave the barrel,

I can’t promise you won’t kill the man

who has waited all his life for the answer

to this moment, but if you lean to the right,

if you lean back and look as hard as you can

for that mountain you came from, sunlight

warming the pines, clouds approaching

from the north with a gift of silence,

if you do this you might just graze

the man’s temple, so close you might hear

his name, the humming of blood

over bone, the many voices

within, the years to come.

The Discothèque

(for Tony Lagouranis)

Loaded down with prisoners after another night’s raid

we pulled into the Mosul airbase, the men gagged,

zip-tied, blindfolded with engineer tape.

Forsman ate a Snickers up in the hatch

while everybody else slept shoulder to shoulder,

1st Platoon’s radio silent of chatter, humming in static.

I held a 9 mm pistol in my hand, watched

how the prisoners’ heads slumped in resignation,

one of them mumbling a slow rocking of prayer.

And I didn’t feel a thing. I just wanted to sleep,

to wake and find myself in California –

anywhere else but here.

We turned them over to the MPs, who looked bored

of caffeine and paperwork as I filled out the depositions,

the Iraqis shunted into holding pens of wire.

I remember complaining once about The Discothèque,

that nearby container I mistook for an on-base club –

Where the pogues chill out, I said, those fucking pogues.

From that metal box shrouded in a camouflage netting

I never heard the screaming. I never heard the breaking of men.

I heard only music – guitars from distorted speakers.

The deposition forms didn’t have a space