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Contests : War Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2004 : Rob Cook
THE SONG OF IRAQ
I saw the sheik wiring his beard with explosives.
I saw the sheik leading young foxholes out of a journalist's slit-open throat.
I saw the sheik at Pak Punjab eating tomatoes that were bombs.
I saw the sheik holding our president's hand
and robbing the faces of the dahlias there.
I saw the sheik burying heartbeats in the sidewalk.
I saw the sheik burying heartbeats he cut from a burqa.
I saw the sheik feeding camels to abandoned marines.
I saw the sheik burning in the desert and praying that his god of cadavers
sleep here in the oasis he built out of figs and humans
who found their song before death.
I saw the sheik reading to the sand he gouged out of his own skin.
I saw the sheik take to bed each grain until each grain had a name.
I saw the sheik hiding in the mosque scorpions he made children with.
I saw the sheik unrolling his women and gutting them for prayer.
I saw the sheik swaying in the henna leaves, forgotten.
I saw the sheik beg forgiveness from a cobra for kissing the kohl
around a woman's eyes.
I saw the sheik at dawn circling Fallujah, the soldiers asleep in his turban.
I saw the sheik circling Fallujah at dawn, eating blood from the helmets left behind.
I saw the sheik offering his hands to the sheep, who stayed alive
on their coats of smoldering hair.
I saw the sheik cleaning his leg with a tooth he found in the piles of tank treads.
I saw the sheik running away with goats no one is looking for.
I saw the sheik knocked down by old women carrying vegetable sacks.
I saw the sheik put his ear to the ground and I saw the sheik was part of the ground
where ears were growing on strands of jasmine.
I saw the sheik holding the Euphrates in a blanket and leading it back to Najaf and
Karbala and Sadr City.
I saw the sheik pulling acacias from babies sleeping together in a mass of pulsing dirt.
I saw the sheik turn into a mango tree at sunset, and the black-dressed mullahs
and rebels eating from his groin.
I saw the sheik lighting a palm leaf so his god would be able to find him.
I saw the sheik leading his locusts to a day of paradise fires.
I saw the sheik leading souls that had become brothers by stone, young boys whispering
through the marching bamboo.
I saw the sheik pounding on the walls inside a clay shard.
I saw the sheik pounding on the walls of his shadow.
I saw the sheik taking off his robes and letting the tongues out of his chest.
I saw the sheik taking off his head and his neck and letting the mob
track his footprints back to the sky he dug for them.
This poem won Second Prize in the 2004 War Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers. Author Rob Cook received a $500 award. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About Rob Cook
Rob Cook lives in New York City where he co-edits Skidrow
Penthouse with Stephanie Dickinson.
His first manuscript, The Cellophane Madonnas, was a finalist in the
New
Issues Poetry Prize competition and a
finalist for the Gerald
Cable Book Award. His work has appeared in The Bitter Oleander, New Orleans Review, Harvard Review,
LIT, Poetry International, The Canary, Good Foot, The Hat, Ur-Vox, Lilies and Cannonballs Review, Hayden's Ferry Review,
The Southeast Review, Laurel Review, Mudfish, Runes and other publications. His poetry has also been nominated three times
for a Pushcart
Prize. See
another poem by Mr. Cook at Shampoo 18.
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