Imagining an Iraqi imagining us

I’m taking a break and highlighting some classic posts from my first full year of blogging, 2004. Though a note on the post says it’s a rough, first draft, I ultimately decided it didn’t need further revision. (Please click through and read the whole poem.)

From a Distance:

God knows how many times
I have stood frozen in the hot street
with rifles pointing at my crotch

& watched myself – small
& impossibly thin – in the oil-black
mirrors of their sunglasses.

They never take them off, not even
to enter a mosque. God knows
they are easy to hate.

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