A Lullaby for Bullets

The Discothèque

Jundee Ameriki

American Internal

To My Unnamed Daughter

Ajal

The Inventory from a Year Spent Sleeping with Bullets

The Mutanabbi Street Bombing

Eucalyptus

In the Tannour Oven

Study of Nudes by Candlelight

In the Guggenheim Museum

The One Square Inch Project

NOTES

About the Author

Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Phantom Noise was first published in the US in 2010 by Alice James Books. This first UK edition reprints the contents of that book, with the addition of one poem not included in the original American edition, ‘On the Surgeon’s Table’, along with some minor amendments.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following journals and anthologies in which these poems appeared, sometimes in slightly different forms: Alehouse Press: ‘Study of the Nudes by Candlelight’; The Alhambra Poetry Calendar (2010): ‘Dar as-Salam’; Between Water and Song: New Poets for the Twenty-First Century (White Pine Press): ‘Wading Out’ and ‘Guarding the Bomber’; The Columbia Poetry Review: ‘Jundee Ameriki’; The Cortland Review: ‘Homemade Napalm’; The Georgia Review: ‘Wading Out’; Literary Witnesses: ‘Lucky Money’; The New York Times online: ‘Guarding the Bomber’; The Northwest Review: ‘Stopping the American Infantry Patrol Near the Prophet Yunus Mosque in Mosul, Abu Ali Shows Them the Cloth in His Pocket’, ‘Mohammed Trains for the Beijing Olympics, 2008’; The Portland Review: ‘.22 Caliber’; Southword (Ireland): ‘Eucalyptus’, ‘To My Unnamed Daughter’, ‘A Lullaby for Bullets’; The Stinging Fly (Ireland): ‘American Internal’; Stone Canoe: ‘At Lowe’s Home Improvement Center’; The Virginia Quarterly Review: ‘Unearthed by Wind’, ‘Perimeter Watch’, ‘VA Hospital Confessional’, ‘On the Flight to Alamosa, Colorado’, ‘The Discothèque’, ‘Ajal’.

My deepest gratitude to the following: Dan Albergotti, Donald Anderson, Doug Anderson, Siah Armajani, Stephen Barile, Aliki Barnstone, Tony Barnstone, Willis Barnstone, Sarah Barr, Paul Bellowar, Tom Bosch, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Kevin Bowen, Kurt Brown, Kim Buchheit, Rosanne Cahn, Matt Cashion, Cyrus Cassells, Peter Catapano, Jo Chapman, Russell Conrad, Patrick Cotter, Tim Crowley, Martín Espada, Tony Fiorillo, Patsy Garoupa, Ted Genoways, Paul Guest, James Haba, Corrinne Clegg Hales, Charles Hanzlicek, James Hathaway, Lee Herrick, Garrett Hongo, Doug and Tristan Humble, T.R. Hummer, David Jackowski, Martha Jessup, Haider Al-Kabi, Marion Kelly, Maura Kennedy, Dorianne Laux, Suzie Lechtenberg, Kwang Ho Lee, Philip Levine, Soheil Najm, Anne Marie Macari, Adrian Matejka, Khaled Mattawa, Declan Meade, Col. Tom McGuire, Sadek Mohammed, LTC John A. Nagl, Oliver de la Paz, Mike Robinson, Summer Rodman, Patricia Smith, R. Southerland, Tim Skeen, Gerald Stern, Ernesto Trejo, Charles Trimbach, Bill Tuell, Jessica Valls, Dan Veach, Bruce Weigl, Barry Wexler, Sholeh Wolpe and Steve Yarbrough.

I would like to thank the Lannan Foundation, Alison Granucci at Blue Flower Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, the William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences, Matt O’Donnell at From the Fishouse, Dan at Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Tim Crowley at the Marfa Bookstore, and the Kerouac Project of Orlando, Florida for their kind and generous support of my work (and for all they do to support artists).

Many thanks to Neil Astley, Julia Bouwsma, Todd Davis, Patrick Hicks, Ilya Kaminsky, Dunya Mikhail, Joe Millar, Ahmed Nussaif, April Ossmann, Carey Salerno, Lacy Simons and Ellen Doré Watson, for their guidance, insight and kind support of this work. Love and thanks to my family and friends, with special thanks to Stacey Lynn Brown, Brian Voight, and – of course – to Ilyse.