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For Abdul Rahim Ahmed Abdul Rahim Awad, Age 0

  Often there is bone-trill in me When birds of prey near. Their wings Displacing air, the sound dopplered & trailing. Yesterday an eagle eight feet Over trail, apparition in heavy Cloud appertaining to pinnacle & peak. Briefly, a bolt of fear, shock Of my smallness. A landscape redolent With varied lives reduces yours Unto pinpoint, unto what I’d thought Of as almost disappearance. But That is the province of man. What is cyclical, Spurred by fecundity & churn, what Bears out the elemental, is beyond us.  Our deaths at each other’s hands A mockery of the world’s need & hunger.  We craft lives in which your name Erases with your small body. In which The elemental cedes to flimsy  Inventories of meaning. Maybe yours Is a name iterative of its import, Abdul. Maybe repeated in its repeating The intransigence of life coupled  With world, with world-awe, meaning Preceding all naming. May it, wordless,  Sing your name this morning. 
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Eulogy

This one, dear reader, is long & sad & about my Pops who died. Been thinking on him lately, so here it is. I think probably I'll keep adding onto this one for as long as I'm alive-- a letter I'll keep writing. I feel like it has a filament of life in it. Anyways. Buckle up.    Eulogy I remember thinking Unsieved, maybe, a glottal Clarity in my throat. Chest Laden, a dizzied breath &  Undone. My father Leaning against the doorframe A brief music for darkness To clutch, winged, absented. Where did you go? I am Still moving, tree to tree, trading One constellation for another. I want A longer breath & so take one but am left Unchanged. The day Expands. Clumped soil, cutlass of river Says bank & cuts & says bank again & all The long while, bare & clear, river carries water & water carries refracted light, fractured light, Shard of disfigured sun. It sings your song These many miles away. Carries its broken Melodies to the Bering Sea. What m...
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For Mohammed Nidal Hisham Atallah, Age 0

  I repeat myself, Mohammed, but there is In repetition pulse of encounter– language Shored between borderlines of meaning, Dehiscing, almost, repulsed at notions of Fixedness. Syllabary of caul– to speak Into it is to emerge from it, anew. How many Births in you Mohammed? How many trailing Narratives ribboning time, riverine histories Carved of rock & rubble? Your midwives  Percussive blow & encroaching eruption.  Your attendants soot & black ash, rifle Report & mother’s wailing. You were born On a cemetery, headstones rubble of blasted Buildings, concrete & rebar, shattered wood, Glass like silver light off tremored water.  The dirt beneath century-deep, yet unsettled.  This is your history now– hiding the voluminous Dead under pavement & parking lot— Mohammed, we emerge from ourselves  Under the quick of our speaking. Our rooting Chutes & tunnels through the fragmented Syllables of names we’ve buried– Mohammed Nidal Hisham Ata...
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