When the American Deportee Dies in Baghdad

COHORT 2

The tumor swells inside me

like tectonic plates below the Pacific coast,

I’m sure of it. The streetlights in Phoenix

melted again this year, all sad and scoliotic,

and my best friend’s Florida hometown

is being swallowed by the sea.

They say it can’t hurt so deeply for so long

and they have no warrant on my body

but I let them in anyway. White skin,

all of them. Soulless surgeons, all of them,

spreading me on the table and

prodding my vulva with a blade —

this body is no home and this home is no

body and nobody will know what happened

to me when they take me in the night.

They ask why I can’t see and refuse

to dim the lights. A great Pacific garbage patch

bobs inside my heart, harnesses and strangles

the fish and the fury, hangs them by six-packs

some drunkard didn’t cut. Play me a cleanse song

and see what it does. I am back where I came from

and I don’t speak the language, don’t go by

my name anymore, have nowhere to sleep

and don’t share their God. If Heaven is real, Lord,

I hope I know the native tongue.

Writing: Maria Gray

Music: Milou de Meij

Art: Beljita Gurung