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Chapters (73)
  1. Cover
  2. Note to the Reader
  3. Illumination of the Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew
  4. I. abu ghraib arias
  5. The Blues of Lane McCotter
  6. (echo /ex/): “In the name of God…”
  7. Searching the Koran (Standard Operating Procedure)
  8. (echo /ex/): “In the beginning…”
  9. The Blues of Javal Davis
  10. (echo /ex/): “next day…”
  11. Public Address/Ghost Soldiers
  12. (echo /ex/): “his name is G…”
  13. The Blues of Charles Graner
  14. (echo /ex/): “On the third day…”
  15. Handling the Koran (Standard Operating Procedure)
  16. (echo /ex/): “First the man…”
  17. Document Exploitation (Standard Operating Procedure)
  18. (echo /ex/): “Now these are the generations…”
  19. The Blues of Lynddie England
  20. (echo /ex/): “me…”
  21. The Blues of Ken Davis
  22. (echo /ex/): “Now I am what I saw…”
  23. MUSLIM BURIAL (Standard Operating Procedure)
  24. (echo /ex/): “And it came to pass…”
  25. The Blues of Joe Darby
  26. (echo /ex/)
  27. II. first recitative
  28. Woman Mourning Son
  29. Recipe from the Abbasid
  30. Home Sweet Home
  31. The Iraqi Curator’s PowerPoint
  32. Black Site (Exhibit Q)
  33. Asymmetries
  34. Salaam Epigrams
  35. War Stories
  36. III. hung lyres
  37. “The new theory: not to praise too much…”
  38. “When the bombs fell, she could barely raise…”
  39. “you mute you without openings…”
  40. “Is the ear…”
  41. “in the cell of else…”
  42. “this is the air we script to lips…”
  43. “I had no names to blazon their tender…”
  44. “She asks, is that man crying…”
  45. “What does it mean, I say.”
  46. IV. second recitative
  47. Breathing Together
  48. Testimony (after Daniel Heyman)
  49. When I Was a Child, I Lived as a Child, I Said to My Dad
  50. Black Site (Exhibit I)
  51. Love Potion #42
  52. Saddam’s Fingerprints
  53. Etruscan Cista Handle
  54. Black Site (Exhibit M)
  55. A Toast (for Nawal Nasrallah)
  56. Cell/(ph)one (A simultaneity in four voices)
  57. V. homefront/removes
  58. “I hear it, at times, even in the wind.”
  59. “was taken was rapidly…”
  60. “What consequence is a body.”
  61. “tried hanging myself…”
  62. “I was planning my lesson on imagery…”
  63. “taken to outside court…”
  64. “In the wake of.”
  65. “I suspended upside…”
  66. “You look at me / looking at you.”
  67. “so I could pass the time… ”
  68. “As if, somehow, I were responsible.”
  69. <hover to see video>
  70. “On the flight overseas…”
  71. “I did not know my…”
  72. Compline
  73. Notes

silence / from our imagination / in wave upon

wave / in a shipping container & I love you

in a box of shock you love me / in a cemented

dream / we’re a happy family /

with a great big hug and chains that leave no mark

Won’t you say you love me too?

“this is the air we script to lips…”

@

this is the air we script to lips / air we usher in lungs / that ushers us

in / this is the air / there is no other / we unseal & key / the same air /

hair of the fathers / shoulder of the mothers / air of laughter & air

of slaughter / air / of wrecks & reliquaries / of wasp & papyrus

barbed wire & hung / lyres & this is the air we draw in / air we expel

sphere that spires in us / spears us into us / stories we find ourselves

in / the middle of something / a building we did not build

& this is the air of ozone & benzene / that quickens the blood /

clarifies the eye / this is the air / there is no other / nesting in us /

then beaked & breaking / a sudden flutter / ring / out of us /

this is the air we gather / there is no other / lower / nature / field

this the clearing / this the threshing / floor the flesh’s door / unseen

seething song that fills the nautilus that the little hammer wields

to drum / aria of the air sculpting the thinking bone

“I had no names to blazon their tender…”

@

I had no names to blazon their tender

curves, their riverine curves

so took the ones we inherit: auricle

to name the human bloom—

what does it mean, amputee?

lobed trumpet that listens to the oracle

of cymballed world: canal & drum

vestibule to the oceanic home

where windows are elliptical & circular

is there such a thing as “orphan”?

& we host a motion labyrinth, a squid.

Maleus, incus, stapes. Cover your ears

dear child, your cartilage is not yet hard—

it’s too soon to know to hear is to bend.

Your silk purses will sow the wind.

Your flexible shells haul their own ocean.

“She asks, is that man crying…”

@

She asks: is that man crying

or singing? How should I answer?

War takes him in its fingers,

raises his body, a punctured bone

flute, to its lips, and breathes

the living dust

to dust alone—

this is the air we scull

air of ancestors & ashpits

just five, the child’s baptized into this

unhappiness:

she corrects the voices

she hears butcher

the name of the country she’s never

seen—it’s “ear-rock,”

not “eye-rack.”

“What does it mean, I say.”

@

What does it mean, I say. She says, it means

to be quiet, just by yourself. She says, there’s

a treasure chest inside. You get to dig it out.

Somehow, it’s spring. Says, will it always

rain? In some countries, I say, they are

praying for rain. She asks, why do birds sing?

In the dream, my notebook dipped in water,