The Night Before the First Gulf War
by Adrienne Ross
The night before the war
Paul is singing in the kitchen as he washes the dishes.
I sip lemongrass tea. We talk about what if
the oil fields burn for 2 years and there are no
monsoons to bring rain and rice to India and Asia,
and how large a hole would be burned in the ozone layer.
My cat rubs against my leg crying for food.
The night before the war I drive home alone from class
listening to oldies stations playing the protest songs of my childhood.
The street is blocked with protesters.
I take another way home.
At the 24-hour grocery I buy bread for tomorrow's lunch, and sweet satsuma oranges, and a newspaper, and say no to a woman begging for money on a cold night.
The night before the war I turn off lights, compost my
vegetable scraps and don't turn on the heat.
I try to remember the wars I've lived through:
Cuban missiles, and Vietnam, and the bombing of Cambodia,
And the bombing of El Salvador, and Grenada, and Panama, and Nicaragua.
I try to remember all the wars that were other people's wars:
the '67 mid-east war, and the '73 mid-east war, and the invasion of Lebanon,
and the Falklands, and Ireland, and Sri Lanka, and the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
I try to remember all the wars at home:
civil rights, and Kent State, and the homeless,
and the bombing of Amchitka, and trickle down economics,
and a safety net for the poor.
I remember when I marched, and didn't pay war taxes, and wrote letters, and organized civil disobediences, and leafleted sailors for 2 years at 6 am every Friday in the bitter cold and quiet of Atomic Project Road, West Milton, New York,
where they train the men that sail the Trident submarines that carry the missiles that end the world.
I remember waking up one morning, tired
ready to admit I didn’t know how to save anyone, and they didn't want to be saved, anyway.
The night before the war I sit at the kitchen table,
3 hours after the deadline,
eating a bowl of brown rice flakes and soy milk,
and I pray.
Praise for AGAINST AGAMEMNON
"The French Resistance poet Robert Desnos once wrote 'for the earth is a camp lit by thousands of spiritual fires,' and he saw that in times such as his and our own 'one bivouacs all over the world.' These poems are written by the light of those fires. We owe a debt of gratitude to James Adams for retrieving them from our present darkness." —Carolyn Forché, 2009
"In this dynamic collection, veterans, peace activists, relatives of service members, U.S. citizens and people from around the world all share space as they write the war from multiple perspectives and poetic approaches, lyrical, angry, hopeful, and heartbreaking." —Kazim Ali, 2009
"A crucially important anthology for the times we live in, Against Agamemnon brings together the diverse voices of 49 international poets writing from a multiplicity of places, situations, and times-differing strands coming together to form a unifying thread of protest against the wars that have ravaged and continue to ravage our planet." —Douglas Shields Dix, Cultural Theorist, Prague 2009
From the EDITOR'S PREFACE
"The poems collected in this volume come from the world over: Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Mexico, Palestine, Poland, South Africa, Ukraine, United States, Vietnam. They say essentially the same thing: war is a pitiless destroyer. Many of the poets are presently well-known—without doubt some are destined to become better known—but all write between a boiling urgency and intense reflection." —James Adams, Houston, 2009
