IRAQ POEM: Can your ears reach our land?

[Grammer was a member of the fall Christian Peacemaker Teams
delegation to Iraq.]

Can your ears reach our land?

is your attention here anymore?

Have you stepped out to relieve yourself?

Do you hear our shed blood?

Can you taste the tears of our mothers?

Are you a father to every child?

Bring your good times

to our shanty

Love breath us into

symphony

Teach us to dance

through the pain

Your daughters are snapped like twigs

…where was I…

Your children are tended like cattle

…where was I…

Your sons invent new ways to die

…where am I…

I rail at the sky and step on your echo

I call for conveyor belts to drop from the heavens

and miss you in the face of an illiterate refugee boy

and in the friendship of a fisherman’s son