We are Starved

Homecoming

50 AN ATTRACTION TO DISTANCE AND DISAPPEARANCE From him what cannot be hushed. That deep. That throated. Hoarsening on my name, your name. But we are dead in his mouth. The way your idiot son holds my hand, as if it were his own. The posture of charity is emboldening and lurid. One suffers. One wants to flee. 51 He asks me, why you touching me for? The injured fawn I carry from the road, knowing it will not survive, is one part. Another is the hand of a mother on the brow of her son. My fawn. My mother. O, how I am lost. 52 POOR DOGSBODY, POOR DOGSBODY’S BODY for John Travolta Not strayed, but leashed. The service truck coming at the dogs across the tarmac, the actor emerging from his jet, whistling, waving, the deathyelp, the German Shepherd chasing my brother, the more than a million stray dogs roaming the streets of Baghdad, the airline apologizing through their spokesperson (we regret to inform you, a matter of unfortunate circumstance, couldn’t we just buy you another), the actor demanding something be done, the neighborhood children shouting, I couldn’t tell, at my brother or the dog, the man telling reporters, “I wish they would kill all the dogs because they are harmful, they carry diseases and I’m afraid for my children,” the shouts that come from among the paparazzi gathered at the Bangor airport, the actor trying, without success, to shield their bodies, the part of his ass where the teeth had gone through, four red wells of blood, the two shooters and two vets assigned to either shoot or poison the dogs and then dump them on slag heaps, the reports of the “freak accident,” the actor alleging premeditation or negligence at best, the owner pulling the German Shepherd away, crying, calling its name (Salaam, Salaam), the refuse and waste strewn throughout Baghdad’s streets, the dogs that are drawn to it, the dogs already there. Not mourn, but cull. 53 I HAD NOT BROUGHT YOU INTO THE WORLD FOR LOVE FOR NAUGHT Out of what darkness, the child? Out of whose making? Because even that darkness, though the habitation of jackals, of wolves, of boys beating the bushes to force you into the open, is ours. Hagar far off but not far enough away, saying, let me not look upon the death of my child. That dark. And around it, farther and farther, dusk, this gloaming, a seclusion that forbids any entrance or departure, a distance like that between being freed and freeing someone. go away, daddy, go away Because a parent is an even greater darkness. As if I were of that world. As if, world in which nothing surrenders but to itself, it were already mine. Go away, says Sarah. Go away, says the Lord. And we loosed the neighbor’s dog into the wild because we mistook it for a wolf or a jackal or one of those rough boys from the bushes. Go away, says Abraham, as he forces Hagar back, away from her home, from him. Abandoned, or else betrayed, whatever best explains the darkness or does not or cannot. go away, daddy, go away ...