I may not write
my memoirs after
the invasion, how can it be
any use I
know a sentence has
seven words
Phone lines are now
jammed with lamb shit
should I use
a period like my classmates
My mother would like to
hear my voice

filling the sink with
water as if I’m
doing the dishes
done studying
the Iraqi subjects
It’s no use?
Naming aircrafts
for fun
sonic booms sound like bombs
to scare me
with one hand
I held all my subjects underwater

Am I being clear
it’s not what I saw
but that I saw I could shoot
anyone and no one
stop! Two friends
in royal blue uniforms liked
to sit beside the driver
during rush hour
thrash metal in my head phones
at a checkpoint two men ordered
get out trigger in
the morning heat the driver’s window
down so I could see it didn’t matter

If the newscaster’s in
a hospital the network’s
not broadcasting
screams under my bed
I don’t know
if I should tell you
it’s not the dates
on either side of the dash 1990—
that meaning is in
the dash
does it matter
anyway shock waves, shells
if in the end a crescendo

You hear me
at daybreak a floor above
you, the pencil I drop
at night beneath your window to
kids on the street, in the margins
writes pay attention I am here
at my desk, Dear
president, you’ll build
a kids’ island
wherefore free
falling from a swing, you see
my breath, the sound of pins

Tallying my own numbers
if we aren’t built I forsee
a somewhere over
an island where dancehalls where
my friend gently
at dusk reading
with slushies so blue they light up
what you see
in neon dreams, I bounce
ideas with him he says are you surprised
classrooms look like
barracks yet a song