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On April 23, 2019, a man in Sunnyvale, CA drove his car into
pedestrians he thought were Muslim

 [Happy] Sweet Sixteen, Iraq Conflict
by Leena Soman Navani

    ​                                    After Evie Shockley
 
A teenage girl’s                          skull
is partially removed to make room for the swelling.
 
A man rocketed                         his car
into a crowd of                                                                    people.
 
He thought she came from
                                                       a Muslim family.                   
 
Seven others were injured in the crash.
 
The family is not Muslim
                                                       ​but they are brown.
 
The man is a veteran of Iraq, which was a place
before & after war. He might have PTSD.
He, too, has                                 brown skin.
His surname is                                                               Peoples.
 
 
America must not ignore the threat
gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril,
we cannot wait for                   the final proof,
the smoking gun                      that could come
in the form of a                        mushroom cloud.
 
 
This happened                    in a place called           Sunnyvale.
 
 
Witnesses heard                  the suspect                   say
I love you Jesus                         Thank you Jesus              Praise Jesus
 
 
The suspect was once a sergeant, served more than five years.
 
 
The girl, whose soft mushroom cap brain was exposed,
was not yet born                       when this war began.
The police are treating the crash as a hate crime.
 
It’s traumatizing to these victims,
it’s traumatizing to the police officers              who had to see             the carnage,
it’s traumatizing to all members of the community             who wonder                about whether
                                                                                                                          these people
                                                                                   were targeted
                                           because of their
race & religion.
 
Peoples has no criminal history,                   was serving
as a military contract auditor                        for the Defense Contract       
Audit Agency                                                     prior to the incident.
 
 
Prior to the incident,                                       he delivered food
to a Bible study group                                     he attended.
 
Peoples’ mental state will be the ‘battleground’ of the case.
 
Prior to the incident,                                       he was a gunner,
honorably discharged                                     a driver driving around Sunnyvale
with a disassembled shotgun                        in his car.
 
Prior to the incident,                                       he earned a degree
                                                                                                                           in accounting.
 
On September 11 2001,                America felt                            its vulnerability
even to threats that gather                     on the other side                      of the Earth.
 
We resolved then,
             & we are resolved today,
                                       to confront every threat         
                                                                    from any source         
                                                                                               that could bring
                                                                                                              sudden terror & suffering
                                                                                                                                                       to America.
 
The girl has a younger brother who wasn’t hit by the vehicle, but was hurt
 
when the car                hurtled                                into the busy               intersection.
 
The boy was not yet born                                           when this war began.
 
Peoples received many awards                                  for his service, including
 
Army Commendation Medal                    Iraq Campaign Medal                  Combat Action Badge
 
Global                        War                 on                     Terrorism                                   Service                Medal
 
 
 
 
He was not yet born                   when this state of war began.
 
 
 
 
The daughter                                    was the most                             severely hurt.
 
                        She is in a coma &                               fighting                                      for her life.
 
 
 
 
None of us was born                      when the war state began.
 
 
 
 
& yet, all of us                                   come of age                            warriors.        
 
 
 
 
Every one of us               a battleground               a balance sheet              an intersection of                       
 
                         innocence                          trauma                                 terror
 
                                                                                            war

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​Leena Soman Navani writes poetry, fiction, and criticism, and her writing has been featured with Ploughshares and Kenyon Review among other publications. For her work across genres, she's received support from the National Book Critics Circle, Catapult, Brooklyn Poets, BOAAT, Bread Loaf, the Visible Poetry Project, and the Bennington Writing Seminars, where she earned her MFA.

ISSN 2157-8079
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