Apertures

For Namir Noor-Eldeen

1.

Took in the coughing light

of a fire shouldering from a truck

and later the light disappeared

from the shelled out remains

of a car, burnt and twisted the way

bones do not. Here are children

and in front of them two sandals,

a pool of blood, the unghosts

of what was, perhaps minutes before.

Sometimes a woman praying.

Sometimes children throwing rocks

at the aftereffects of explosions.

The sand cushions the knee when bent

for stability.

2.

Black and white, not for dramatic

effect. Grainy, people as the structures

that move. The helicopter's camera

wobbles while invisible voices

speak in another language: Crazyhorse,

Hotel, Charlie, Echo. Count

the bodies. Hollow the insurgent with

a camera. Leak the bastards into the bastard

street and leave them, unholy.

We cannot see their faces anyway.

3.

I too am twenty-three, though I do not

lie down ripped apart and drilled through

where the light can peer through the holes.