& subtle threats, all sprinkled with sauce. Sew the slit

into a smile, dispatch handshakes. Add Chevron,

Exxon, Texaco, Shell. Place the sheep in the oven

& leave until this black slimy stuff, excretion

of the earth’s body, is crispy on the outside,

& ready for presentation.

Home Sweet Home

The Iraqi Curator’s PowerPoint

The Iraqi Curator’s PowerPoint

You can see the footprints around the hole

The Iraqi Curator said. They smashed the head

Because they could not lift it from its base,

This statue of Nike. It’s still missing.

And this is Umma Al-Ghareb, my dig site.

The Mother of Scorpions, it means. Y’anni,

Next slide: more damage by looters. If the eyes

Are gems, they will be made into holes.

If the skin is gold, goodbye. Now this is a sight:

The bodies too heavy, so they took the heads

Of these terracotta lions. A slide is missing

Here. What I ask you is this: base

What you believe on what you can almost see.

For example: you hear the dogs bay

From the outskirts of the city. They head

Wherever they smell flesh. My eyes

Still see buildings that now are holes.

What you see is not what is missing.

Next slide. I’d heard that Etana, missing

For years, was in Damascus. Then in Beirut.

Then, I got a call from an art friend, a whole

Continent away. Does it have a scratch at the base

Of his hand and along his chest I said he said yes

Of course I said and it is headless

And writing on the shoulder beneath no head

And he said yes and yes the right arm missing

And I said my God I said John take my eyes

And let me see. I was blind and now had sight

Though I could not see it. This is the basis

Of art, sadiki. There’s something beyond the hole

Which each must face. Missile sites. Army bases.

The hole in the ground where thousands climbed

Into sky. Missing heads of state. Eyes.

Black Site (Exhibit Q)

Asymmetries

Asymmetries

Longing to grasp the familiar, names

against the anonymous

appendages & naked flesh, a nipple the eye

could nuzzle, to hide in

dark islands of hair, I near the photo—

as if the body erotic

could shield against the camera’s scalpel.

In its distance, the bodies

without faces line a riverbank, shade

into some darker shadow,

obeying the desire of gravity. I’m thinking

of Iraq, how they lay out

each disinterred nest of femurs & ribs

on separate sackcloths,

trying to punctuate the run-on sentence.

After making love, once,

you said every face, split in half, fit

so precariously, so comically,

we spent the next half hour shading one side

of our faces in the mirror,

then the other. This world is centaur: half

daydream, half nightmare,

not knowing if we’re awake or dreaming.

Wandering the gallery, we drift

onto an imagined balcony

& gape at the traffic