My Name on His Tongue: Poems

taking a moment to thank our sponsors

110 taking a moment to thank our sponsors CNN is advertising dark meat stacked in a heap a prime-time display of flesh never to be sold at Safeway a humiliated stack of military training gone digital a slab of trailer park meets Mossad no leftovers just prime cuts whose bloodline can be traced back to before time when there was proof of God before the age of pixels and Guantanamo before Texas before Pilgrims this is what’s underneath the candy-coated hatred whose crinkly wrapping has ripped apart its thick Disney paper torn its Hollywood tissue in shreds on the floor its evangelical dye in a puddle surrounding a man on a leash held by a cross-eyed woman outrage pours from the lips of pundits as the scenes unfold, unwrap, drip into our consciousness as we read 111 this is an anomaly such things happen in war American soldiers are apple pie fighting for the freedom of the Iraqis fighting terror terror terror terror terror terror that tattoo stitched between the legs of each and every American never mind that there is no umbilical cord attaching this country this war this stack of men, hooded, leashed, posed to the nineteen men shaved and clean who staked out planes until they thought they had God’s permission to perform the ultimate test of the Emergency Broadcast System never mind the last few years decorated in Texan democracy bordered in box cutters that have ripped out the hem of dialogue understanding history bringing us to this lip of destruction brought to you not on al-Jazeera but on CNN ...