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The digital map on the wall
displays the American wars
in colors:
Iraq in purple
Syria in yellow
Kuwait in blue
Afghanistan in red
Vietnam in green.
The war
on the map
is beautiful
smart
and colorful.
Copyright © 2017 by Dunya Mikahil. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 19, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
1
Her voice floated out
from the deepest blue
a phone could transmit:
She said: I am M . . . Remember me?
I said: I had a childhood friend named M.
She said: That’s me, your childhood friend.
Where are you?
I said: Lost, and you? Where are you?
She said: Lost.
And our laughter
made the absence disappear.
2
We resumed our talk
that began fifty years ago
on the branches of the jujube tree
in Baghdad,
not paying attention to how the days
had spilled from our pockets.
3
The jujube tree grew old;
If I had one more day
I would write a love poem
composed of one word
repeated like binary code.
I’ll multiply it by the number
of days that passed
without saying it to you
and I’ll add the days
Through your eye
history enters
and punctured helmets pour out.
Frequent tremors occur in your land
as if invisible hands shake your trees day and night.
They blockaded you and banished the oxygen from your water,
leaving the hydrogen atoms to quarrel with one another.
Shouldn't the nations be disturbed by the face of a child
who shuts her mouth and eyes
in surrender to UN resolutions?
But they only opened their own mouths slightly,
smaller than a bud,
as if yawning or smiling.