And what if I damn you? If I write the explosion

in stageable italics, if I poeticize and profit-size and

donate and educate, what if I learn

your language and boundaries, then what?

What if in my mouth your words simmer

               the truth first? If I condemn

you to oblivion, will you know I have spoken?

What good are your ears attached to your nodding skull?

Gazan parents scrape halves of their parents’ souls

from beneath their fingernails. The rest of you

gather the remains in a pile and congregate

to shake your heads once the smoke has died.

               The art starts when the dying stops. You set a timer

during my eulogy. Are you comfortable

if I damn you?

You have space to hold the soft parts

of my kind with a disinfected pen, poised and heat-seeking.

               The rest of us are unaccounted for.

When the death is new and the body is malleable,

but the death is old and the body is earthy,

the tragedy is worth preserving.

Who do you serve, who do you save

if not the children? Who do you speak for

and what have you done with my mouth?

Not my mouth, but a young boy in rubble.

He leaves one eye propped out on the concrete.

He bears witness to your stare. He is a child

who cannot draw the breath to say to his brother:

               “I was hurt under your arm.”