The List
By Kari Ann Martindale
Iraqi Dinar, Jordanian Dinar, US Dollars
Passports
I can’t stop The List. I don’t want to.
I cling to each word, like the bags to my back, my waist.
I translate.
This one’s missing fingers.
He lifts the teapot, a stream of sweet, hot tea, just like mom’s sun tea.
No--I don’t have a mother.
I have no family. Not by my side, not in my dreams—as cold as that seems,
that’s how I survive endless days and sleepless nights.
-
Chem-lights
Leatherman
Sunscreen
Temperatures rise.
My sandals are melting on the streets, pants like saran wrap vacuum sealed to my thighs.
Air is sucked from my lungs as I try
to remember
to breathe.
Each bead of sweat is empathy leaving.
-
We drive.
Through the meager swamps, run-down factories, abandoned tanks;
those tanks aren’t moving, but they manage to barrel over my soul,
crushing my spirits--mile after mile.
But still I smile.
Hair clumped and sandy,
grit oozing from my pores.
I’m surrounded by more
Iraqis with guns
than Americans with guns.
Iraqi Dinar, Jordanian Dinar, US Dollars
Passports
I am your sister, not your occupier--
that’s the message I send,
and I believe the naïve words I say
despite occupying their space every day,
in every way.
We arrive.
A shaykh answers the door.
His son hovers, fanning me with fronds as my protests go ignored.
I wonder which one of us feels humiliated more.
_
This one shifts, tired of the gun in his crotch.
It flags my body, a bullet in the chamber.
I’m always on watch, wondering exactly what will kill me that day.
Gunfire? Infection? Dehydration?
This is the price I pay for serving a rich man’s invasion.
Explosions in the distance.
Wound management kit
That’s it: The trauma kit. That’s the one I need.
Money and a passport won’t save me from IEDs.
A bomb is one thing that US Dollars can’t beat.
-
Water
MRE’s
We speed.
Children man checkpoints, proud of their AKs and handmade badges.
I hope they don’t get overrun by insurgents determined to catch us.
Over and over, I rehearse what I would say to captors.
La illaha ila Allah, Muhammad Rasulu Allah.
I will swear allegiance to any deity, but the truth is, I bear none.
The Almighty is the one with the mightiest gun.
-
Out in the street I stand, surrounded by odors
and men who wedge themselves between me and my guards.
Non-lubricated condoms
Condoms can carry water, you see. But also--
if someone tried to rape me, could I convince him to put a sheath on his sword,
to keep this war out of my womb?
-
We floor it.
I ride, flanked by my protectors, trying to hide that my bladder is full.
Landmines in mind, I don’t want to stop,
but Mother Nature gives me no choice this time.
Baby wipes
Underwear
I hope I don’t pee on mine,
as I squat between the door and my guard; he’s so close I could touch him.
I search--for snipers, for scorpions,
for my dignity--
clutching the waistband, ready to pull up at a moment’s notice,
as sand blows into my face and every other place.
I wipe,
as if I’ll ever feel clean again,
as if I can wipe away war.
-
Today,
after almost two decades,
I still feel the sand in my vagina;
the grit in my teeth, my hair, my eyes;
still feel The List running through my head.
But no list can help me reconcile the horror with the pride,
the shame inside;
I carry no List of the parts of me that died.
****
Kari Ann Martindale is a veteran of the US Air Force and served as a government-contracted interpreter. She has been published in Pen-in-Hand and Maryland Poetry Review 2022, and featured in Berks Bardfest 2021. She sits on the Board of Maryland Writers’ Association and is a founding partner of EC Poetry & Prose.