we can’t get close enough

to Al-Azzawi reciting “A Toast,” and laughter

in two languages marinates

the hunger of this room, and now you lean

to hear him, who has not lived

in your homeland for most of his days on earth,

like you who have lived

your country in kitchens, far from your country,

testing the tastes of the ancients,

citizen of this implacable state and its armies

pitching their permanent tent

in the dictator’s palaces; you, who out of grief’s

maw, the daily shipwreck of news,

translate the alien clay of cuneiform relief

into Mesopotamian stews,

a toast to you, Nawal, at whose Mesopotamian

table I have been honored to sit

and be sated, not with fried eggplant but buran,

not with drumsticks baked in fig

but with Afkhadh al-Dijaj bil-Teen, your homeland

transfigured by flame, Baghdad

now spiced with coriander, now stewed in the skin,

a toast to you, for my insides

still sing, and now the people above us are dancing,

they cannot help themselves,

they are wrapping themselves in a song,

stuffed like grape leaves,

they have no room for us in the light, so below

in our rootcellar of words,

here in the underland of exile, a toast to you,

the country of your tongue.

Cell/(ph)one (A simultaneity in four voices)

V. homefront/removes

“I hear it, at times, even in the wind.”

“was taken was rapidly…”

“What consequence is a body.”

“tried hanging myself…”

“I was planning my lesson on imagery…”

“taken to outside court…”

“In the wake of.”

“I suspended upside…”

“You look at me / looking at you.”

“so I could pass the time… ”

“As if, somehow, I were responsible.”

<hover to see video>

“On the flight overseas…”

“I did not know my…”

Compline

Compline

That we await a blessed hope, & that we will be struck

With great fear, like a baby taken into the night, that every boot,

Every improvised explosive, Talon & Hornet, Molotov

& rubber-coated bullet, every unexploded cluster bomblet,

Every Kevlar & suicide vest & unpiloted drone raining fire

On wedding parties will be burned as fuel in the dark season.

That we will learn the awful hunger of God, the nerve-fraying

Cry of God, the curdy vomit of God, the soiled swaddle of God,

The constant wakefulness of God, alongside the sweet scalp

Of God, the contented murmur of God, the limb-twitched dream-

Reaching of God. We’re dizzy in every departure, limb-lost.

We cannot sleep in the wake of God, & God will not sleep

The infant dream for long. We lift the blinds, look out into ink

For light. My God, my God, open the spine binding our sight.

Notes

NOTES