What Does a Drone Witness?

poem after Aria Aber's "Azalea Azalea"

In the evening my aunts tell me they’re going to Shomal
to avoid air strikes
while I listen to birds sing their last lines before dusk.
The rhythm of their warbles leaves me speechless
reminds me of the evening I wrote a poem
for the first time.

I ask my Farsi professor if her sisters
in Kermanshah are safe, and she reminds me
there’s more to Iran than
nuclear, nuclear, nuclear.

And every day since, I’ve worried
I’ll never write another poem again,
for this is all I want to consider:
metaphors and images
melting the mind of language,
repelling death,
and I never want it to
end, but I know the tomb atones
for no one.
I try to find the right time of day, sit down
with my guardian dragons of tenderness,
press ink to earth,
and pray
for the right words to lead my language.

Dear doorway to death, dodge my welcome mat as I swipe through headlines.
30,000 pounds,
weight of how many aunts, I wonder,
a bunker buster pokes an ancient mountain
for the first time.

They say that writing is a form of witnessing,
but I don’t know shit
about martyrdom. All I know
is there are missiles flying across skies
I’ve never seen
in the name of my father’s hometown
and non-nuclear weapons departing
from a place I never wanted to visit and
arriving at a place that visits me every day,
so now I wonder,
what does a drone witness?

On their way out of the city, my aunts
tell me not to worry, but that’s not what I
want to hear.
What I want to hear
is their rage,
their fury, their fear,
their chaos,
and only then would my own
rage and fury and fear and chaos
feel worthwhile.

Make love to me while drones rain down
on the dirt that birthed me,
while I rearrange the letters of my origins
to remind myself
Iran is an anagram for rain.
Make love to me while —

nuclear, nuclear, nuclear

— there must be more
to home
than rain,
and there must be more
to writing
than witness.

There must be more than
nuclear, nuclear, nuclear,
more than
what missiles witness.

Make love to me without witnessing me,
save that side for heaven
because I’ll still be thinking about
the distance
between my home
land
and my
self,
searching for signs of life in any image I see,
wondering whether the news will tell me
something about my aunts that I don’t already know.