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Thistle
by Tracy May Fuad

​                                               It so happened that the King fell in love with Raisin.
                                                                                                                 –Saddam Hussein
 
I can’t tell you how I found
 
war to be sexy – you would
 
only understand the shrapnel
 
in your knee – and I can only
 
think about my body turning
 
crude when my grandfather called –
 
how every body was an ear
 
and windows eyes – how I
 
got off because of where
 
we were – have you considered
 
tracer bullets to resemble shooting
 
stars – did you feel a melting
 
when you snuck between
 
two hotel rooms like I did – did
 
you think about stones
 
and flesh meeting – can I tell you
 
what honor tastes like inside
 
out and wrapped in plastic –
 
how brown appears blond
 
against a bed of oil – Kirkuk
 
was hot because the flames licked
 
at the earth eternally – no wonder
 
you look like you do in profile –
 
I should have known
 
why your picture is a thistle,
 
plant so emblematic of neglect –
 
and I, the earnest gardener
 
of every thirsty weed, willing
 
to sit by the river of oil and trace
 
the lines the thorns made when
 
I pulled them from my flesh.  

​ 
Tracy May Fuad is a poet from Minnesota and an MFA candidate at Rutgers-Newark. Her writing has appeared in Ninth Letter, Sixth Finch, Prelude, BOAAT, CutBank, Tammy, DIALOGIST, Nashville Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and elsewhere.
Read more..
"My Grandpa Emails Me Regarding My Plan to Return to Kurdistan"
​Fall 2016, Issue 19
ISSN 2157-8079
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