SUMAC

“… what stained a country’s ‘honor’ was not

the discussion of the black spots in its history

but the impossibility of any discussion at all.”

—Orhan Pamuk

I have no nose

Upon my face.

Nor you.

You have no face.

I see nothing.

I admit nothing.

There are no stars,

Only the crescent moon

Bleaching bones

Into black dust.

History, a whining wind

Tripping back onto itself

In an echoing desert.

Guilt proves nothing.

Who left can attest to

Scabbed feet scraping

Into the brute wasteland,

Who still claims the crude cry

Of a nude girl deflowered

With a bayonet,

Who records the ache

Of the infant’s belly bloated

Beyond a crust of bread?

We never counted skulls

Heaped like trophies in

The dirt of our laughter,

Or fished the bloody streams

Running legless rivulets

To the base of Ararat.

Go ahead, bring forth the witnesses—

We strop our blade,

Sing amnesiac anthem,

Reach to latch our gate

With sharpened fingers