Underneath burqa’s
black is a Guns N’ Roses
t-shirt and tight jeans
she snakes into each
morning. As they pat her down
at the checkpoint she
bobs her head in time
to Welcome to the Jungle,
leaking through ear jacks.
*
Didn’t sign up to guard
no oil ministry papers
in an empty building
while motherfuckers
shoot to celebrate or kill.
And they say this here’s
the goddamn cradle
of all civilizations?
roads all shot to hell.
*
They emerge from holes
and shelled homes when the soldiers
stop blindly firing
to bury the dead
and assist those who are caught
straddling the line
between the two worlds.
Graves are shallow and look like
hastily plowed fields.
*
Aboard the US
NS Comfort,the doctor
peels back bandages
to see a brain pulse.
Fissure in the skull’s narrow.
This wound he can close.
Posted at the door,
two service men, rifles cocked
in case the man bolts.
*
Tracers hiss the night,
a hail of bullets broadsides
the truck, a semi
answers. What the fuck
are you firing at? the Chief
barks. They shot the truck.
But what you shootin’?
He’s got no answer. Spits chew
that sizzles the sand.
*
I stand like a mule
before this man’s M-16
in my dishdasha.
Shift from foot to foot.
He thinks I know no English:
Orders. Secure bridge.
By noon we are ten.
We share rumors, cigarettes,
wait to be let home.
*
Outgoing letters
catch helicopter downwash—
bust the ropes that hold
them and cascade out
over the ocean—flurry
of never heard birds.
*
Outside Karbala,
black ash that was once a man
leans against the wall
as if he’d just stopped
for a smoke. The eyeless sockets
fill with swirling sand.
