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download audioback SOLMAZ SHARIF
Drone
:somewhere I did not learn mow down or mop up
:somewhere I wouldn’t hear your father must come with
me or I must fingerprint your grandmother can you
translate please
:the FBI has my cousins’ computers
:my father says say whatever you want over the phone
:my father says don’t let them scare you that’s what they want
:my mother has a hard time believing anything’s bugged
:my father and I always talk like the world listens
:my father is still on the bus with contraband papers
under his seat as uniforms storm down the aisle
:it was my job to put a cross on each home with dead for
clearing
:it was my job to dig graves into the soccer field
:I wrote red tracksuit
:I wrote Shahida headless found beside Saad Mosque
buried in the same grave as the above
:I wrote unidentified fingers found inside Oldsmobile car
:I wrote their epitaphs in chalk
:from my son’s wedding mattress I know this mound’s
his room
:I dropped a knee and engaged the enemy
:I emptied my clip then finished the job
:I took two steps in and threw a grenade
:I took no more than two steps into a room before firing
:in Haditha we cleared homes Fallujah-style
:my father was reading the Koran when they shot him
through the chest
:they fired into the closet
:the kitchen
:the ninety year old
:the stove
:just where was I
:una a una tu cara en todos los buses urbanos
:Here lie the mortal remains of one who in life searched
your face
:call me when you get home
:let’s miss an appointment together
:let’s miss another flight to repeated strip searches
:that Haditha bed with magenta queen sheets and
wood-shelved headboard and blood splattered up the
walls to the ceiling
:they held each other
:they slept on opposing ends wishing one would leave
:mother doesn’t know who I am anymore
:I write Mustapha Mohammad Khalaf 15 months old
:I write Here lies an unknown martyr a big security guard
with a blue shirt found near an industrial area with a
chain of keys
:Martyr unknown only bones
:they ask if I have anything to declare then limit my
response to fruits and nuts
:an American interrupts an A and B conversation to tell
me you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do
:he strikes me as a misstep away from she was asking for it
:what did you expect after fishing Popov from a trash bin
:what did you expect after accepting a marbled palace
:they drag the man who killed my uncle out a hole
:they inspect him for ticks on national television
:no one in my family celebrates
:when the FBI knocks I tell them I don’t have to do
anything I don’t want to do and they get a kick out
of that
:she just laid there and took it like a champ
:she was dying for it
:at a protest a man sells a shirt that reads My dick would
pull out of Iraq
:my mother tape-records my laugh to mail bubblewrapped
back home
:my mother records me singing Ye shabe mahtab mah
miad to khab
:I am singing the moon will come one night and take me
away side street by side street
:sitting on a pilled suburban carpet or picking blue felt
off the hand-me-down couch
:the displaced whatnots
:I practice the work of worms
:how much I can wear away with no one watching
:two generations ago my blood moved through borders
according to grazing seasons
:then a lifeline of planes
:planes fly so close to my head filled with bomblets and
disappeared men
:scaffolding sprouts nooses sagging with my dead
:I burn my finger on the broiler and smell trenches
:my uncle pissing himself
:shopping bags are legs there is half a head in the gutter
:I say Hello NSA when I place a call
:somewhere a file details my sexual habits
:some tribunal may read it all back to me
:Golsorkhi, I know the cell they will put me in
:they put me onto a crooked pile of others to rot
:is this what happens to a brain born into war
:a city of broken teeth
:the thuds of falling
:we have learned to sing a child calm in a bomb shelter
:I am singing to her still 
Drone
Force Visibilty
Mess Hall