At the blinkered edge of dawn,
I can taste the turn of the year.
Fall snakes under the eaves,
The shudder of cold down
The spine, a foretaste
of death none can escape.
Twenty years before,
I saw the child cry out,
His face twisted as the rebar
Smoking at the foot
Of Manhattan.
He was running in Khost–
From the fires we’d rain
From the skies, a Palindrome
For the Jets that toppled
Our proud fingers, killed
The office workers, busboys
Stock traders, the firewalking
Men who tried to save them.
I wanted our fire, to cremate
Those who hated us
Without looking in our eyes.
Till I looked on the boy,
I had sure and certain hate,
And no mercy
Although the shepherd
Tried to guide me past
The hellmouth gates
Of revenge.
Only that child’s face
Saved me from entering,
Let my rage slack.
Today, the Palindrome
Arrives: the ruined face
Of another boy, beside
The broken vessel
Of the Marine trying
To keep order.
Could order ever come
From death midwife to
Death, new grudge
For the old,
The shattered sphinx
Of my nation’s empire
And the bodies in the
Sewage ditch
Of the people we hated
And taught and bombed
And tried to save.
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Jasmine Marshall Armstrong is a poet, humanities researcher, and teacher. Her work is informed by her Working-Class roots, life in California’s Central Valley, and background in journalism. She has published in Poets Reading the News, Sojourners Magazine, the anthology “We Are Beat,” among others.
Image of an agent of drone warfare, the General Atomics RQ-1A Predator, taken from the public domain.
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