David Castleman
Dead men tread silently.
Perish soon or perish late,
nothing will abate:
that same old bloody bait
compels our fate.
Unholy emanations whisper.
...now i plunge my pen against the page
and scribble toward a purpose unperceived
for now, in breathful, placid tone
i am no more a poet than a rose...
...but images i view, although receptive
to my bid (my muse is busied elsewhere
nursing other selves), and i desire
exercise, enveloped by pleasant melancholy...
...enabled to imbue with tactile silhouette
a bit of pesty matter, from so faint
a place as this, i would label it as mine
(ostensibly): mine to brag of, mine to burn...
...but when i feature feeling from the dream
it flies from me, like writing on a pond...
Whose breath maintains our beautiful America?
(narrated by a young girl refugee in Iraqi mountains)
In our holiest mosque in Basra
my sisters and my mama and I prayed
while Papa shooed away the dragons outside.
From richly fruited plains an American dragon
so smart it knew just how to behave
flew through the doors and vaporized the altar
with heat unspeakable.
In an instant every candle celebrating light
and a thousand worshippers became dust.
We'd been late because our baby disappeared
and when the dragon moved within the holy place
we spun and ran, anticipating heat.
Everybody's papa was dead as we ran out
and my sister who was left and I ran out
and traipsed among the caravans of refugees.
In these cold mountains the cold is bitter cold
and Basra was so hot among the dragons
I yearn for temperatures more moderate.
Whose hand maintains America the beautiful?
(narrated by a young girl refugee in Iraqi mountains)
Bellying through these unyielding mountains
the atmosphere's too cold for folks to breathe
and many don't.
On that broken road from Basra
we lost so many babies they were counted
by the truckload.
Shivering while the shooting stops we wonder
how a pilot with a mama back at home
could fire those bullet biting from the sky.
Somewhere on rich American soil a child wheels
an old-fangled bicycle with balloon tires
and weeps in humiliation.
Today my sister ate my final scrap of bread
but I had always hated her
and now the rats will benefit.
In America the little children are so lucky
even the girls might grow up
and be pilots, proud buckaroos.
Whose eyes reflect our American experiment?
(narrated by a young girl
refugee in Iraqi mountains)
After bombing when we woke into the morning
we watched the streets of Basra where they stood
below the rubble and beyond,
spattered brown, I supposed, by blood
from those lifeless buzzing vaguely human shapes
which covered them in original new designs.
I found a little doll dropped on the ground
and snuggled the little doll through the caravans
and now we sit on these cold mountains.
On the broken road from Basra
my little doll wept ceaselessly
but such a sin is easily forgiven.
She blamed the men who fly the planes
but women fly the planes now, too, I told her
and men cannot be blamed for everything.
In the night when the bombs explode on Basra
and when the mountains dance farther up the sky
her stone face bears the wisdom of the gods.
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