The Rules
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- The Rules
An interruption, a rally of dark men with dark eyes chanting,
a language that is not translated. Soldiers grin for a camera,
a flag is raised over the rooftop of a collapsed pharmacy, and children playing board games
in basement shelters. The Minister of Defense
on learning to kill: This has happened before.
An old man and woman, an umbrella protects their heads, and there is no rain,
the umbrella a sign of resistance. The Majority Leader explains
diplomacy’s drawbacks, a vote is taken to rush aid, a shipment of bombs.
From the rubble a man lifts a girl, the girl’s limbs slip from the sockets—
my father, an old man, watched the arms leave the body.
A woman in a café speaks loudly. They deserve it she says—Should I tell her
I call my father every night? “Are you alive?” “I’m alive.” [End Page 1156]
I account for the absurd. Stay calm. Remain quiet.
I know the rules. They are no longer written in books.
I know what to do I keep telling myself.
I know what to do. [End Page 1157]
Hayan Charara is author of two books of poems, The Sadness of Others and The Alchemist’s Diary. His work has also appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Michigan Quarterly Review, Chelsea, Literary Imagination, Siècle 21, American Poetry: The Next Generation, Present/Tense: Poets in the World, Language for a New Century: Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond, and Inclined to Speak: An Anthology of Arab American Poetry. He was born in Detroit.
