✽
An Order for My Backpack
—For the Public Relations Officer at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; July 9, 2016
This is my watch,
this is my phone,
this is my application for this visit,
approved & blameless in a clear folder.
My keys,
my U.S. passport,
my press pass,
& water bottle, emptied.
My ticket home,
my wallet,
my emergency contact information
in pencil on a napkin.
And this is a reminder—the list of words
I’ve promised
not to utter
restricted to a yellow Post-it:
hunger strikes
forced feeding
detainee deaths
migrant operations
closure
And this, my camera—
its trust diminished
since I’ve agreed to delete
any photo that captures
locks, gates
thresholds
reinforced doors
the name tags of soldiers
detainee faces
detainee bodies
detainee feet
anything that might be recognized by one of their mothers
& the sea before the horizon.
And this is Falkoff’s book of poems—
the flowers pressed between its pages
absorb then repeat
lines prisoners composed in cages.
And this you can tell
is a simple tube of cream.
It is for the stinging hives, troubled
witnesses on my thighs & shoulders.
Hives I read closely and cannot appease
steal my sleep a few days at a time.
They testify outside the orbit
of soldiers in watchtowers.
And this is my notebook
filled with lines not prepared to die.
For words, for hives-turned-welts,
they move closer to the spine.
Author’s note: “An Order for My Backpack” was inspired by Günter Eich’s poem “Inventory.”
