☊ My body knows the boy has a body

We’re on a day trip to a museum, we’re crossing the parking lot, Mohammed on my shoulders.

                   kick, kick, inrhythm kick

               kick, kick, inrhythm kick

    my collarbones are steady and sturdy against his ticking calves 

                                                    kick, kick, inrhythm kick

               kick, kick, inrhythm kick   

We’re playing on a grassy lawn, sun-spangled afternoon, and Mohammed rushes me for a tackle. 

  nudgeshove just under the ledge

                                                      of my rib his head abut, butting shovenudge 

                                                   And I faa

                                                              aaa 

                                                                  all

                                                                     down. my back on hard ground   

                                                                                                       giggles bubble out of us and up

We’re going home, hushed track light blue the floor of our bus in two lines, across an armrest                                                                                     

                                                his sleep slump…. hiz    

                                                                                      zzzs slump

he’s heavy into my shoulder

It’s 2002.

I live in Australia, and Mohammed does, too. He is seven, an Iraqi refugee, and I’m twenty-two, an American. 

I volunteer with a group that supports refugees and their children. Mohammed’s mother is Wiam. 

She works as a cleaner, and I help with her son after work so she can go out in the community to tell her story, smile, relive what she ran from, weep, and bow her head while a photo is snapped

She lives a symbolic life, to live.

Now it’s 2003. 

I live in New York. Is Mohammed still in Australia? I don’t know. There is no contact for Wiam.

I protest, carry signs, submit to the crush of crowds. I yell in the streets. I yell at the TV, watching President Bush deliver that speech, America plans to shell Iraqi bodies.

I read newspapers, write letters, argue points. I put on a play. I insist, I insist, I don’t want this violence, not in my name. NIMN.

All that's nothing, I rage with impotence, my words vapor faint, vapid, incapable. I was part of an American plan: go places, American, learn things, American, come back and teach us

and I’m back, but you can’t hear me, I can’t say anything right, I can’t get to you what I know

zzztracklightbluesundapplebitumenmuso  If you knew what I know, you couldn’t do this. 

      kick, kick, inrhythm kick

                 kick, kick, inrhythm kick

my body knows the boy has a body   

              nudgeshove just under the ledge

                                                        of my rib his head abut, butting shovenudge 

my body knows the boy has a body

                                                                                                he’s heavy into my shoulder

the boy