Rumpus Original Poetry: “PatRIOT” by Xavier Cavazos

patRIOT

________When I am waterboarded to near death—my broken
________________________________________________________limbs ragged with

blood & my crimson gravel leg snaps
________the concrete street

________& the sun bakes my tattered clothes
to a sister, to a mother, to a father—to a friend blown into pieces.

________When you, the passive American tourist, has your child
_______________________________________________lowered onto a Judas

______________________________________chair & your child’s rectum engulfs
a wooden triangle point like a chestnut being pried open

& ghostly white patriots pry false truths from your child’s dry cracked mouth &
_______________________________________________there, in the windowless room

your child’s anus, shiny like a baby’s crowning head, bleeds with olive oil,
________bleeds with lost dreams

________bleeds with chains tied to a ceiling &
a barking dog.

________When the nipple of a breast of a mother is pulled from my mouth & a pear
______________________________________________________________of anguish

is shoved in, right after, breaking all of my teeth & the fragments of pulp
__________________________________________fragments of dentine

___________________________________________________of enamel
___________________________________________________& cementum

are stepped on by patriotic men & tiny teeth fragments
________penetrate a strong

___________________________________________________desert tan boot
& shoot up directly into the nervous system of an operative—

___________________________________________________into
___________________________________________________the innermost portion

of a soul
of a connective tissue

of nerves
___________& blood vessels that nourish patriotism.

___________When all gods are dead & Allah means the same as Christ on the Cross
& Christ on the Cross means the same as detonation—

_______________________________means the same as blood kit
___________blood in a bag, blood in a mosque, blood & a white supremacist terrorist.

_____A child’s dangling ankle & a brown child’s face hooded like Trayvon in a casket &
_______________________________into biohazard bags, into father forgive them—

_______________________________into the rotation of a crime scene compass &
a faintly traced body barely seen in a thousand bits of a brutal explosion—

_______________________________means a consent-to-search form &
guilty by association—means for they know not what they do.

_______________________________Means drawing logs substitute for a whole body
_______________________________that once was—amen I say to thee.

__________________________Then somewhere, there, allover in dried bits in the bend
of a concrete curb a dead body’s soul

praying Allah & a Christian’s quenched throat & we are passive American patriotic
______terrorists you & I. ___________We are, together, the passive American—

_______________________________we are measuring up in numbers
at the national forensic mapping station—this day thou shalt be with me in paradise—

___________________be with me in Alabama, in California, in Georgia, in Mississippi,
______in Portland, Oregon &

______we are gathering,
______we are gathering

______at the Valley View elementary school assembly in Ellensburg, Washington—
______we are gathering, we are gathering at the Sunday Christ on the Cross church

on Chestnut Street & in the Four Square building—
______we are gathering,

______we are gathering
______at the annual Central Washington University Native Pow Wow & salmon feed—

______we are gathering,
______we are gathering at the Lake Bowl bowling alley in Moses Lake, Washington—

______we are gathering,
______we are gathering at the Mission Ridge ski area in Wenatchee, Washington

___________________________________________________where we bomb the mountain
_________________________on snowboards on Sunday mornings.

____________________Behold thy mother. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
______We are good Sunday bombers—

____________________passive American terrorists bombing the ridge in the sun
______& late in the afternoon

______we are patriot terrorists hiding in the aisles of a Trader Joe’s &
______we are healthy Americans, you & I—________I thirst. It is consummated.

______We are the alpha & the omega—___________into thy hands
___________________________________________I commend my spirit &

____________________at night, just after prayer
___________________________________________________we are feeding our hungry

____________________crying-out children
________________________________every last God-damn thing they need.