The more you shared memories that broke
\noff inside you, the longer I stayed every time you hit me.
\nAt nineteen, I thought that was love.<\/p>\n
Soldier-you smoked opium to forget boys,
\nwhose high-pitched voices chimed about promises
\nof bikes, rice above rations, even a lamb.<\/p>\n
Khomeini, short on tanks and men, ordered soldiers
\nto take boys, to teach them a new game called mine-sweeping.
\nThose who won “shaheed shod”, became martyrs.<\/p>\n
Open-air trucks dropped boys off daily then near the front,
\nwhere your troop was ordered up dunes to man
\nanti-aircraft guns. Boys fingered plastic keys<\/p>\n
painted gold, oohed at khaki jackets, new and stamped:
\n“Permission from Imam Khomeini to enter heaven.”
\nThey didn’t even question the rope looped between their wrists.<\/p>\n
Exile-you chain-smoked Marlboros, tried to forget them,
\nbut the more you tried, the harder it was for your fists to open
\nand remember why you loved me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The more you shared memories that broke off inside you, the longer I stayed every time you hit me. At nineteen, I thought that was love. Soldier-you smoked opium to forget boys, whose high-pitched voices chimed about promises of bikes, rice above rations, even a lamb. Khomeini, short on tanks and men, ordered soldiers to … Continue reading Soldier-You, Exile-You<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3604,"featured_media":863,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"issue":[6874],"class_list":["post-780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","issue-6874"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-25 06:50:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3604"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}