Whose eyes reflect our American experiment?
(narrated by a young girl refugee in Iraqi mountains)
d. castleman
After bombing when we woke into the morning
we watched the streets of Basra where they stood
below the rubble and beyond,
spattered brown, I supposed, by blood
from those lifeless buzzing vaguely human shapes
which covered them in original new designs.
I found a little doll dropped on the ground
and snuggled the little doll through the caravans
and now we sit on these cold mountains.
On the broken road from Basra
my little doll wept ceaselessly
but such a sin is easily forgiven.
She blamed the men who fly the planes
but women fly the planes now, too, I told her
and men cannot be blamed for everything.
In the night when the bombs explode on Basra
and when the mountains dance farther up the sky
her stone face bears the wisdom of the gods.