Guantánamo
Waning moon. Rising now. Creak, it goes. Deep
over the exhausted continents. I wonder says my
fullness. Nobody nobody says the room in which I
lie very still in the
darkness watching. Your heart says the moon, waning & rising further. Where is it. Your
keep, your eyes your trigger
finger your spine your reasoning—also better to
refuse touch,
keep distance, let the blood run out of you and the white stars gnaw you, & the thorn
which is so white outside in the field,
& the sand which is sheetening on the long beach, the soldiers readying, the upglance
swift when the key words, of prayer, before
capture, are
uttered, a shiver which has no hate but is not love, is neutral, yes, un-
blooded, as where for instance a bud near where
a hand is unlocking a
security-catch calls
out, & it is an instance of the nobody-there, & the sound of water darkens, & the wind
moves the grasses, & without
a cry the cold flows like a watchdog’s
eyes, the watchdog keeping his eye out for difference—only difference—acts being
committed in your name, and your captives arriving
at your detention center, there, in your
eyes, the lockup, deep in your pupil, the softening-up, you paying all your attention
out, your eyes, your cell, your keep, your hold,
after all it is yours, yes, what you have taken in, grasp it, grasp
this, there is no law, you are not open to
prosecution, look all you’d like, it will squirm for you, there, in this rising light, protected
from consequence, making you a
ghost, without a cry, without a cry the
evening turning to night, words it seemed were everything and then
the legal team will declare them exempt,
exemptions for the lakewater drying, for the murder of the seas, for the slaves in their
waters, not of our species, exemption named
go forth, mix blood, fill your register, take of flesh, set fire, posit equator, conceal
origin, say you are all forgiven, say these are only
counter-resistant coercive interrogation techniques, as in give me your
name, give it, I will take it, I will re-
classify it, I will withhold you from you, just like that, for a little while, it won’t hurt
much, think of a garden, take your mind off
things, think sea, wind, thunder, root, think tree that will hold you
up, imagine it holding you
up, choose to be who you are, quick choose it, that will help. The moon is colder
than you think. It is full of nothing like
this stillness of ours. We are trying not to be noticed. We are in stillness as if it were an
other life we could slip into. In our skins
we dazzle with nonexistence. It is a trick of course but sometimes it works. If it
doesn’t we will be found, we will be made to
scream and crawl. We will long to be forgiven. It doesn’t matter for what, there are no
facts. Moon, who will write
the final poem. Your veil is flying, its uselessness makes us feel there is
still time, it is about two now,
you are asking me to lose myself.
In this overflowing of my eye,
I do.
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About the Author
Jorie Graham is the author of Sea Change, Overlord, Never, Swarm, The Errancy, and The Dream of the Unified Field: Selected Poems 1974-1994, which won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She is the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University.
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