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 bitHello 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 sayThat's the house of a martyr pointing with their noseThat'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