searching for them, hear the 12-year-old voice just outside

the front door – Where is my father? Let free my father.

My father no bad man. Let go my father.

When I dial 911,

the operator tells me to use proper radio procedure,

reminding me that my call sign is Ghost 1-3 Alpha,

and that it’s time, long past time, to unlock the door

and let these people in.

Illumination Rounds

Will the girl find a bed among the stones?

Will the fighter find a trench?

SAADI YOUSSEF

Parachute Flares drift in the burn time

of dream, their canopies deployed

in the sky above our bed. My lover

sleeps as Iraqi translators shuffle

in through the doorway – visiting

as loved ones might visit a hospital room,

ill at ease, each of them holding

their sawn-off heads in hand.

Wordless, they wait for me

to dress in my desert fatigues,

my aid pouch with painkillers

of little help in sewing the larynx back,

though I try anyway, suture by suture.

She finds me at 3 A.M., shoveling

the grassy turf in our backyard, digging

three feet by six, determined to dig deep.

We need to help them, if only with a coffin,

I say, and if she could love me enough

to trust me, to not cover her mouth

in shock or recognition, her hair lit up

in moonlight; if she could shovel

beside me, straining with the weight

each blade lifts in its gunmetal sheen,

then she’d begin to see them – the war dead –

how they stand under lime trees and ash,

papyrus and stone in their hands.

She stares at these blurry figures

in silhouette, the very young and very old

among them, and with a gentle hand

stays the shovel I hold, to say –

We should invite them into our home.

We should learn their names, their history.

We should know these people

we bury in the earth.

I’m out on patrol again, driving

Blackstone to Divisidero, Route Tampa

to Bridge Number Four, California

to the neighborhoods of Mosul, each stoplight

an increment, a block away from home

and a block closer to the August night

replaying in my head.

I wish I could tell you

I’ve come to save someone,

I’ve come with bandages and IVs

for the wounded –

but it’s all bullshit:

I’m here for the turning, that rooftop

swiveling of lasers and tracer-fire,

gunshots echoing years later, the incoherent

screaming I’ve translated a thousand times over,

driving until I finally understand

who it is I’m supposed to kill.

Puget Sound

Clouds shield the stars where jellyfish

drift in the harbor, and facing the water,

in an idling Chrysler, windshield

glazed by rain, Private Reynolds,

who in six weeks will deploy to Iraq

for the first time, white-knuckles

the cord, the ends wrapped tight

around each hand. His wife stops breathing –