As You Sleep the Dead Multiply
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- As You Sleep the Dead Multiply
Sometimes when I see you swaddled in sleep, I think
of shrouded children lowered into pine crates, the trenches
gouged, the day darkening under rising billows.
As you sleep the dead multiply, their faces repeating,
like ceramic casts, your unlined forehead, your proud nose.
I study the flutter of your breath, your arms
folded safe by your sides, your ear that could fit in a thimble.
Your one-month face is still like glass as the children
of Qana are wiped of their dust. As you sleep the missiles
scatter like seed-fall, flaming on Fallujah, where the men dig
up flower beds to make room for children who rest there,
side by side in their wrappings like ears of corn. [End Page 1212]
Andy Young is co-editor of Meena Magazine, a bilingual Arabic-English literary journal, and author of two chapbooks of poems, mime and All Fires the Fire. Her work has also appeared in a number of periodicals and anthologies, including Cincinnati Review, Nawafez (Lebanon), The Stinging Fly (Ireland), We Begin Here, and Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond. She teaches creative writing at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts.
