Refusal

And so, death showed up every morning
as a first thought, with our school principal
shepherding us seven-year-olds down the streets, 
making us chant, “Death to America,” setting
fire to the stars we were yet to count, wishing 
death on a nation none of us
could begin to know.

We were the children of the dead, priding 
ourselves on all the “heroic” ways in which 
our dads had died as “martyrs,” mastering 
words that denied us an idyllic childhood:
shrapnel, missile, and RPG, which sounded  
like the coolest word to leave our mouths

 War-loving men fail to understand:
 your father being summed up in a stack 
 of letters and a stoic portrait; seeing your 
 friend’s blind dad walking his son
 to the school bus every morning,
 waving to him (the son would wave back); 
 eyes rolling at the curious question: 
 Where is your dad? 
  
 “Dead,” I’d respond, refusing to dignify 
 death—the finitude of flowers and the 
 persimmon trees in my grandmother’s 
 house yard. “Dead,” I’d say, though 
 he died in a war with his Iraqi enemies who 
 could have been his brothers in another life. 
  
 But I do not want John, my best friend 
 from my time at Saint Mary’s College,
 who happens to be serving in the US army, 
 to simply scan my hometown with unseeing 
 eyes from thousands of feet above; 
 a “reconnaissance mission” over 
 the city where I have grown up, 
 dreamed and fallen in love.