Sharon Doubiago: Bagdad, April 17, 2003

I wake in the night

to my father, the end of the world

again. Lightning strikes, rain pours

down our bombs. I confess

I want to live. I want—bomb me

for my cliché!—a future

for my children. So

I turn over, fall back

while the seat of civilization burns. I wake

to our troops, our little boys and girls, trying to figure

their stars, where the planets were, just when

we were getting free. Our boys and girls

standing guard so the 5000 year old Bible burns. Terrorism

on libraries. The years since, when the Mother

of all Battles started, when this Highway of Death

How not to hate you, America, myself, my

children

—

Copyright 2008 Sharon Doubiago. From Love on the Streets: Selected and New Poems by Sharon Doubiago. University of Pittsburgh Press. Reprinted with permission of the author.