Baghdad
They weren’t the ferruginous hands of palm trees
scratching the sky crazily
—the dates splattered with red.
They weren’t the ferruginous hands of palm trees
scratching the sky crazily
—the dates splattered with red.
Nor the sweet consumption on its pedestal
with its old serge jacket
and the turntable needle stuck in its arm.
Nor the patios black with oil
and the blood of the black bishops,
dead without any morphine’s aid.
I’m going to love you as much as I loved you.
I will be selfish.
I want to get you back
brick by brick.
I hope the garlic of your testicles
impregnates everything once again.
Lay down beneath one of your bridges, the ugliest one,
and let your river taunt time
and the poet toast with me,
the one with the golden curls and eyes like wine,
the one who said:
“Her love’s fire scorched me twice,
first my bones and later my insides.”
Let there be onion in my dreams and grass on my breast.
Let the white teeth of your girls bite.
Let your men have tobacco.
Curtis Bauer is a poet (most recently American Selfie (Barrow Street Press, 2019)) and a translator of poetry and prose from the Spanish (most recently Image of Absence, by Jeannette Clariond (The Word Works). He teaches creative writing and comparative literature at Texas Tech University.
