Mothers Over Nangarhar. Pamela Hart

      

      MOTHERS OVER NANGARHAR

SARABANDE BOOKSLouisville, KY

      Copyright © 2018 by Pamela Hart

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Hart, Pamela, author.

      Title: Mothers over Nangarhar : poems / Pamela Hart.

      Description: First edition. | Louisville, KY : Sarabande Books, 2018.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2017058703 (print) | LCCN 2017059930 (e-book)

      ISBN 9781946448279 (e-book) | ISBN 9781946448262 (pbk. : acid-free paper)

      Classification: LCC PS3608.A7866 (e-book) | LCC PS3608.A7866 A6 2018 (print) DDC 811/.6—DC23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017058703

      Cover and interior design by Alban Fischer.

      Cover image © prill/iStock

      Manufactured in Canada.

      This book is printed on acid-free paper.

      Sarabande Books is a nonprofit literary organization.

      This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

      The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supports Sarabande Books with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

      FOR MY FAMILY

       Arriving from always, you’ll go away everywhere

      —RIMBAUD

      CONTENTS

       Introduction

       War Partita

       I

       Cities & Signs & War

       River of Painted Rocks

       War Games

       Flynn’s Pond

       To the Person Who Asked about Negotiating Differing Perspectives with My Son If There Are Any While Supporting His Choice

       At the Shooting Range

       Women & War Sestina

       The Cut

       In the Red Cross Parking Lot after a Meeting on PTSD

       Sometimes We Talk about Nothing

       The Shawl

       Landays for Alaha

       The Matins Project

       II

       The Women

       Grace Watches the News and Is Unable to Sleep

       During War We Email Our Soldiers

       Contour Drawing

       Museum

       Land Navigation

       In the Car

       Numerous Gray Areas

       Praise Song

       III

       Looking at Monet’s Water Lilies

       On the Orange Jumpsuit

       My Soldier

       War Stories

       Birds Rising Are a Sign of Ambush

       Night Vision

       Mothers Over Nangarhar

       Drone Song

       Private Jonathan Lee Gifford’s Mother

       Kevlar Poem

       Regarding the Improvised Explosive Device

       Black Ice

       American Mother

       Birds Gather on Empty Ground

       IV

       Drone Mother

       Field Notes from Home

       Kevlar Poem II

       Soldier Undated World War I

       Rules of Engagement

       The Map Is Not the Territory

       Coming Home

       As Thetis

       V

       Everything Is Everywhere

       Obon

       Tea with the Viet Cong Soldier’s Wife

       Stray Dog Story

       Not the Same

       Memorial

       M16/M4

       On the Soldier’s Birthday

       Jalalabad

       Transmigration

       Post Script

       Notes

       Acknowledgments

      INTRODUCTION

      A poem, by its very nature, is an ancillary and obsessive thing. Were the state a ship, as Horace put it to us