Personal Effects

Like guns and cars, cameras
are fantasy-machines whose use is addictive.
—Susan Sontag

I place a photograph of my uncle on my computer desktop, which means I learn to ignore it. He stands by a tank, helmet tilting to his right, bootlaces tightened as if stitching together a wound. Alive the hand brings up a cigarette we won't see him taste. Last night I smoked one on the steps outside my barn apartment. A promise I broke myself. He promised himself he wouldn't and did. I smell my fingers and I am smelling his. Hands of smoke and gunpowder. Hands that promised they wouldn't, but did.

This album is a stop-loss. By a dim lantern

or in the latrine

he flips through it.

He looks at himself

looking nearly as he does—

closest to himself then

as he could be, just learning

how to lean into his new body.

He suspends there

by standing order,

a spreading fire in his chest,

his groin. He is on stage

for us to see him, see him?

He stands in the noontime sun.

A young soldier (pictured above) the son of an imam, brother to six, is among the latest casualties in the military campaign of Susangerd.

your whole body in a photo

your whole body

sitting on a crate

pressing your eyesocket

to the viewfinder

of a bazooka

crouched as you balance

the metal tube on your shoulder

in one you guide a belt of ammo

into the untiring weapon

proud

your elbow out as if

mid-waltz

your frame strong

and lightly supporting the gun

a kind of smile

ruining the picture

You’re posing. You’re scared.

A body falls

and you learn to step over

a loosened head. You begin to appreciate

the heft of your boot soles,

how they propel you,

how they can kick in

a face–

the collapse

of a canopy bed

in an aerial bombardment,

mosquito netting doused

in napalm–cheekbones fragile

as moth wings beneath the heel.

You tighten your laces

until they hold together

a capable man.

Whatever rains,

the weight of your feet

swings you forward,

goose-stepping pendulums

a body less and less yours–

a body, God knows,

is not what makes you

anyway. So the hands

that said they never would

begin finding

grenade pins around their fingers,

begin flipping through this album

with soot under their nails

you were not ready

But they issued the shovel and the rifle and you dug

But to watch you sitting there between the sandbags

But to watch the sand spilling out the bullet holes

But what did they expect

But what did they really think a sheet of metal could prevent

But I sat rolling little ears of pasta off my thumb like helmets

But it was not a table of fallen men

But my hand registered fatigue

But the men in fatigues were tired of sleeping in shifts

But you snuck into town and dialed home until you wrote your fingers

were tired

But the code for Shiraz was down

But all of Shiraz was down

But the sheet lightning above the Ferris wheel of rusted bolts

But I am sure they are alright you wrote Well to reassure yourself

But the wind like an old mouth shaking the unnamed evergreen outside

my window

But what I mean is I'd like very much to talk a bit

Hello

Operation Ramadan was an offensive in the Iran-Iraq War. It was launched by Iran in July 1982 near Basra and featured the use of human wave attacks in one of the largest land battles since World War II. Aftermath: The operation was the first of many disastrous offensives which cost thousands of lives on both sides. This one in general boosted the casualty limit up to 80,000 killed, 200,000 wounded, and 45,000 captured. In retrospect, the Iranians lacked effective command and control, air support, and logistics to sustain an attack in the first place. Saddam Hussein offered several ceasefire attempts in the following year, none of which were accepted by the Revolutionary regime. [6] [dead link]

Congratulations and condolences

They would say

That's the house of a martyr

pointing with their nose

That's the mother of a martyr

They are building a museum

for the martyrs.

Some metal shelf

a white archival box

with his personal effects.

I am attempting my own

myth-making.

He didn’t want to have

anything

to do with it.

White-shrouded, they circled

his corpse, the ridge of his nose

peaking the sheet

or shaded by the boxlid,

around Shah Cheragh.

Daily I sit

with the language

they've made

of our language

to neutralize

the capability of low dollar value items

like you.

You are what is referred to as

a "casualty." Unclear whether

from a catalytic or frontal attack, unclear

the final time you were addressed

thou, beloved. It was for us a

catastrophic event.

Just, destroyed.

died of wounds received in action.

Yes, there was

early warning.

You said you were especially scared

of mortar rounds.

In execution planning, they weighed

the losses, the sustainability

and budgeted

for X number,

they budgeted for the phone call

to your mother and weighed that

against the amount saved in rations

and your taste for cigarettes

and the tea you poured your boys

and the tea you would’ve poured me

approaching Hello.

The change you collected in jars

jumping a bit

as the family learns to slam

the home's various doors.

How could she say

the things she does not

know. A poison

tipped arrow, she told

classmates at recess,

to the neck, hollow whistle

of it launched

from a blowgun

cutting the air between them.

According to most

definitions, I have never

been at war.

According to mine,

most of my life

spent there. Anthrax

in salt and pepper shakers,

patrol car windshields

with crosshairs painted over them,

some badge holding

my father's pocket contents

up to him and asking

where the cash is from.

The war in Iraq, I read,

is over now.

The last wheels gathering

into themselves

as they lift off

the sad tarmac. I say

begin. I say end

and you are to believe

this is what happens.

I say chew 40 times

before swallowing, slime,

and you go home to mother,

press a dog tag to your temple,

press a gun to that,

the tag flowering

into your skull. Thank God

for all-weather floor mats

and the slope of my personal driveway

and beer cans that change

color to let me know

they are cold enough.

The full-sized cab

smelling of iron and Axe body spray.

In 2003, a man held a fistful

of blood and brains to a PBS camera

and yelled

is this the freedom

they want for us? It was from his friend's

head. They were marching

as they figured Americans do.

Between them, hardly three horsepower

and still we shot him.

We say the war is over, but still

the woman leans across

the passenger seat

my son, my son.

I wasn't there

so I can't know, can I?

His mother's bed.

A grief we don't attempt to console.

I killed him she'll tell me

years later. Fuck

celestial guidance

I killed him she'll say

in the midst of civil affairs

he surprises, he arrives,

eyes taped shut, torso held together

by black thread, fridge-cold—

grief is a closed area

cluttered with his fork against the plate

and other forgotten musics.

The enlarged ID photo above her mantel

means I can know Amoo,

my dear collateral damage,

as only a state or a school might do.

each photo is an absence,

a thing gone, namely

a moment, sometimes cities,

a tour boat balanced

on a two-story home

miles from shore

He was, we hope, moved.

Moved, but we will have to guess by what:

• shampoo in her wet hair

• salty and fried breads

• the chase scene in Bullitt

• sangak fresh from the oven dampening the newspaper on the walk home

from the baker's

• the arms of someone who smells nice to him in the morning

• the mouth of someone laced with bergamot or cardamom, who dances

in the kitchen and lets whatever's on the stove burn. Who burns for

him.

and beside him they burned,

they boiled, they fell,

shortly after a loud sound

that makes him piss himself.

• being nice to others

• loose change

• chess. He could beat all the brothers in chess.

He was moved like that

across a minefield—

moved by a hand we cannot see,

a hand that is all our hands combined.

at the bank

of some pond or salt marsh

tall grass

moustache

eyes closed

facing the sun

hands appear dead

by a fashion photographer's standard

your boots

like in the other photos

well worn

your nails square and closely cut

they are my nails

the army-issued belt

I would wear with Dickies

the army jacket

the Doc Martens

the military gear

that would stomp through my father's home

take that poster down my father said

it was Saddam in crosshairs

you are surrounded by the tall grass

and still I want to hiss

get down get down

so lit and tall

a stupid

thin helmet

between you and the gods

As Tolstoy wrote in a letter: And yet, from nearby, all this wasn’t at all as frightening as might be supposed . . . it was a question of who would burn the most powder, and at the very most 30 men were killed on both sides by these thousands of cannon shots . . .

Or as I gleaned from your letters:

would, in Mashhad,

and my own broken Farsi.

freefall

then radio silence. An order

to disarm. Stay.

(December). They say move,

oil lamp. Two mines

as an anti-imperialist

tried to disarm, tried

maybe by the time you

Well. Ok. Sorry. I had

sorry. For this, I

By the time you

asking to bring you a camera,

an automatic please.

I search the cities where you were stationed

a ring of schoolboys

laid out on the plastic tarp

their crooked joints

a middle-aged man with

ground meat

where his foot used to be.

I looked

to see if I could find you

netting over your helmet.

In one letter,

you name the seventh killed

in your company

Well maybe I am next.

You didn't say much else

But it must have

He must have

To record the one name

and that being the name of a dead man

Ok. Bye for real

this time you signed off

on page 6.

His father grew very quiet

His father would

heavy drop sob

behind a closed door

His father was

person eligible to receive effects

A pillbox of opium

in his sock drawer

you hand

plucked wild poppies

to soldier friends

imagine the wetness

at the broken stem

me and two girls

at a Birmingham back fence

clearing almost

an entire vine of honeysuckles

that sugar

tasting vaguely of grass

carnage of petals

and pistils licked clean

at our little bee feet

What I see are your hands

peeling apples, the skin curling

to the floor in one long unravel,

a spit-up film reel

loosened from its canister, and

I'm not even sure they are apples, quince,

pear, some desert potato with a stem.

From the number of peels

I assume you are feeding

the other men in your tent.

Your head is down.

Maybe the cameraman

asked you to look at him

and you couldn't stomach

it. Maybe around you,

today, they fell until

you didn't understand

how you hadn't

been hit.

I decide you are happy

for the knife

in your hands,

the white dust

on your bare feet. I am happy

to see your bare feet

in this photo. They are

the only things that

made me cry. It's that

they existed

and that they, appalling,

look so dead already.

I think it's fair to say

you want to do something

with your hands, whether

or not the photographer

placed the apples in front of you

whether or not they are

apples, whether or not

earlier that day you saw

a friend's lungs peeking

out the back of his throat.

I cannot name

the weapons leaning

on the wall behind you–Kalashnikovs?

Howitzers?—as you write

a letter. I wrote

I burn my finger on the broiler

and smell trenches, my uncle

pissing himself. "How can she write that?

She doesn't know," a friend, a daughter

of a Vietnam vet, told another friend,

another daughter of a Vietnam vet.

it was his bare toes

that made me cry

because I realized then he had toes

and because dusted in the white

desert sand they looked

like a corpse's toes

while his hands worked off a peel

inches above the earth

Operation Nasr, fought in early January 1981, was a major battle of the Iran-Iraq War. Three Iranian armored regiments advanced towards Iraqi forces who had invaded Iranian territory between the cities of Ahvaz, Susangerd, and Dezful. The Iraqi forces were alerted to this movement and feigned a withdrawal. The Iraqis formed three armored regiments into a three-sided box ambush. The Iranians blundered into the ambush and the two tank forces battled for four days in a sea of mud. The battle had been ordered by President Abdulhassan Banisadr who was hoping that a victory might shore up his deteriorating political position; instead the failure of the offensive helped to hasten his fall. [26]

I write him daily

And so I learn to ignore him

And so I begin to list pocket contents as if filing an autopsy report

And I place in his hands a metal tongue of a fly

And I place in his hands a metal tongue of a tank control board

And I place in his hands a Bic lighter and loose leaf paper

And I place in his hands a trigger, a shutter

And still not even a bar of his laughter

And by April the script in his letters grew tighter, barbed, men in a shoulder-

width trench

And when I sounded out M-EE-N to mean mine a hole appeared in the letter

and I couldn’t look at it

And I drove into pothole after pothole

And I drove past a hundred balloons held down in a net

And gone even the netting over his helmet

And alive we bring up the hands to hold together his neck

And I place in his hands his head

And I place in his hands my hands

And I place in his eyes a look we share in the rearview

And I place between us a bar of laughter

And I place between us the looking and the telling they want dead

Amoo,

In a tarot card reading

A asks "Are you open

to love? Are you keeping love in mind?"

Amoo, I think.

Amoo.

The word a moan

a blown kiss

the soft things it makes a mouth do.

Amoo, I thought

as he told me about the Page of Cups,

the echo of what

I've never called you.

Hello you'd approach

in the international terminal.

I'd be disheveled

from the search, raw.

Hello. Do you know who I am?

Amoo Javad I'd say.

The things a mouth wishes to

Amoo jan

or Amoo Javad

or Amoo joon Javad

Janam you would respond—

My life, my soul, you'd say—

Language and its expectations

teaches us

about the relationship

we would have had.

Na kheyr, for example—

that we need words

for refusal makes it likely

we would refuse things

of each other.

Or Baleh. As in you say

Do you know who I am

and I respond,

though you could be a number of brothers

from our albums,

Yes.

I wrote

I burn my finger on the broiler

and smell trenches, my uncle

pissing himself. How can she write that?

She doesn't know.

As if a film projection caught

in theater dust, I play it

out: I approach you

in the new Imam Khomeini Airport,

fluorescent-lit linoleum, you walk up

to meet me, both palms

behind your back

like a haji. You stoop, extend a hand

Hello. Do you know who I am?

Yes, I tell you, I half-lie,

Yes. An address, beloved

lit

a rooftop of doves

crouched to launch

Yes, Amoo.

How could I not?

Undefined