Arming

It is night in America.

And in this house, on a television,

There are men, who talk about arms.

About how we should arm them,

Rebels from another country, so

They can take over a bad regime.

And I know about the violence,

How war spreads across all of us,

Like darkness across grass, or how

People kill people every day in war,

Leaving them, dead, in the street,

Like animals.

And I am thinking about arms too,

Not machine guns or a sniper rifle,

But about arms,

The arms that no one is talking about,

Arms made of skin,

Wrapped around bone, with tendons,

And veins, muscle, and blood, or how

There is a photograph of my husband

From the war in Afghanistan, a child

From a school, with no water, her arm,

Reaching, out, towards his hand, or

A soldier, just after a bomb detonates,

How he feels the force of the explosion

Blow off both of his arms, how the bone

Rips out of the socket, and all the civilians,

The children, who are shot dead, or killed,

By bombs, lying, in rows, on streets, and

Under blankets, or

How their arms are positioned like that,

Down, at their sides, like soldiers, and

My own child, just three years old, and

Asleep, in his bed, on his back,

With his two arms, stretched,

Up, over his head, as if he is surrendering.

My husband and I, in this bed, in America,

With his arm, slung across my chest,

Like an ammunition belt.