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 James Himelsbach First We Must Cross the Desert Leave a bootprint reminder outside the barracks, Twentynine Palms, the Mojave, then take a giant step toward Babylon. Make no mistake, the world is flat after all. A thin stream of acrid smoke scrolls the latest headlines across a cloudless sky. North, gas flares from unattended oil wells trigger another mirage. Through the scope, the enemy is quartered. From a thousand meters, a pink boutonnière blossoms in the center of the chest. Didn't the brochures promise us nights in a forbidden city, treasures unearthed hourly? Ah, yes...but that was before the looters pried the emeralds out of the Caliph's eyes & torched The Ministry of Ancient Artifacts. We can whip ourselves into a roadside frenzy & whirl around the carbonized carcass of a Humvee, seared flesh stuck fast to the steering wheel. I thought my life was fireproof. Now my fingers reek of gasoline. Was that me striding through the wide aisles of raw lumber at The Home Depot, Ridgewood, W. Virginia? No, I am the Iman spouting suras at the local oasis: Surely, the tree of the zaqqum is the food of the sinful. I'll hunker down behind this sand dune & hallucinate the rest of history, summon ordnance from the Indian Ocean, & redraw the maps by morning. What's the theory here? Ask the undertaker as he pokes through the ruins with his tightly rolled black umbrella. Who will be left to call to evening prayer? Only the media keep score, camcorders implanted in every retina. So many sequels already in the works. I am desperate to press on, squeeze through the Karbala Gap, but I keep getting blown back centuries to the banks of the Euphrates where the fifty day wind messengers airborne succulents to prickle my sleep. |