Frisking Two Men in Sadiyah
Kenson says to search them
since they’ve watched us all day
from a doorway. I go down
to the dirt on one knee, begin
where the thin beige dishdasha
grazes the ankle. My palms
then fingers climb as if the leg’s
a rope. Kenson points his rifle;
mine’s slung across his back.
This man, maybe sixty,
doesn’t take his hazel eyes
off my face & as I reach where
my right knuckles brush
the scrotum’s loose weight, he doesn’t
blink. I frisk the other leg, stand—
forehead level with his gray stubble chin,
his smoky breath. I pat the torso,
pat the outstretched armpits, pat
the breast-pocket’s cigarette pack,
then lean into what looks like a hug,
slide hands down his back,
my vest’s six magazines press
his stomach. He sees through
the black ballistic glasses I wear—
all of us wear—for explosions,
for sunlight, & as I squeeze
both arms through his sleeves,
I think he’ll be the one,
after hundreds, to spit gently
on my cheek. I tilt my head.
A few feet behind: Kenson—
just to see he’s there. When I step away,
the man studies my face as if
to put it all to memory. All
I want: to grab my rifle from Kenson,
but the other man steps forward,
lifts his arms, & waits for my hands to begin.
Wave of Bombings
16 More Killed in Wave of Bombings in Iraq
—New York Times, 7/17/13
There was never a black bowling ball, a burning fuse
waving its tail. No bombs but
in things. No IED’s but
in things: the mound
of beige bricks; the soft sand-waves
beside the road; the bridge above
the muddy Diyala. There was never
water, never:
splash. For our crew
of four, there was—not
a wave—the punch of wind, a film
of dust, shrapnel in
Kenson, the Humvee. On patrols we’d wave
to the children. Some would wave;
some would run. We would run,
after bombs, in waves
as if to prove we still
had legs. Don’t think of the thousands of legs
stretched together at ball games
to see & be
the wave. It will happen as someone is eating
or opening a window or walking
dully along. In my case, driving the M114 up-armored Humvee
dully along. Always a ball
of flame but not the ocean-
flop to shore, nor
the tsunami’s rising
ridge of sea. When we,
the alive ones, returned
to fluorescent light, soft
applause, they stood around us
like a parted sea
& they waved small flags
on short wooden sticks.
Iraq Good
The small boy smiles, kicks roundhouses
across the potholed road, says, Van Damme
good? & I say, Yes, Van Damme good.
The boy punches the warm air while we,
on the street for hours, outside
the Sadiyah police compound walled
with Hescos higher than our gunners’
heads, pace circles around the trucks.
Two other boys, maybe nine or ten,
chop each other, gently,
with knife-hands, & one turns, says,
No good Saddam, Saddam
very no, & he points to his sandal’s heel,
Saddam no. & so
it went: Bruce Lee good, Zamzam good,
falafel good, even
Michael Jackson good, even Bush good, even America
very good. We stood,
speaking on ground where written words
were first made, where Enheduanna
wrote her poems, blunt reed
on wet clay, the clay that made the walls
those children slept behind at night,
that filled the Hescos behind our backs.
We leaned, a few feet from the boys,
against Humvees—two-hundred grand
each—made in Indiana. Insurgents
were paid—we knew—to blow one apart:
five-hundred U.S. cash. Sometimes,
as the boys spoke to each other,
their Arabic muffled
by passing traffic & muezzin calls,
we’d talk among ourselves, asking,
just steps from the boys, which one might,
in five or ten years or less,
fight us. Still, these silences, brief,
would break when one of the boys
might point to our rifles, muzzles
aimed at the road, the red-dot scopes
clipped to the carrying handles,
& say, Laser…good, then point
to our dark sunglasses, say, X-ray yes, good,
&, although we’d agree,
there was really no laser, no X-ray,
but if we kept those boys there,
talking, on that street as evening came,
we’d be, for the moment, okay
if only we kept it going: Ali Baba
no good, chicken good, Sadiyah good, Iraq
good, & good, & good.
Hugh Martin joined the Ohio Army National Guard three months prior to 9/11 and later served in Iraq. He is the author of In Country (BOA Editions, 2018) and The Stick Soldiers (BOA Editions, 2013). He is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship. His essays and poetry have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and The Sun. He is currently at work on a collection of essays interrogating how the military-industrial complex shapes discourses of masculinity, remembrance, and veteran identity.
*all poems previously published in In Country (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2018)
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