From reading & writing:
‘…a reaction to my reading of the news about the “American aid workers” who have escaped from the Taliban. I’m glad they were not harmed. That said, the Taliban were right about them–they were whacko Christians from Waco, Texas who were caught with video & audio tapes that could have only one purpose: to convert Afghans to Christianity… I grew up among people like this, people who believe A) that there is a literal hell & B) You are going there if you don’t accept their religious beliefs. (Remind you of certain other people in the news recently?) Missionaries have done as much damage in the world in the last 200 years as armies–indeed, they are often the thin end of the wedge, the fat end of the wedge being colonial armies of occupation. So I have no sympathy for these “young women” & even less for their sanctimonious pastor in Waco who said on NPR this evening that they “were not afraid of death” because they believed in Jesus. Last night on NPR there was a story that quoted a young Muslim man as saying that his friend, who had died while on jihad in Afghanistan, was “already in Paradise with seventy black-eyed virgins.” He hadn’t been afraid of death either, nor was the speaker, unless it was mere bravado. I don’t see much of a difference between these two world views myself. None of these people have an irony organ. How about a crack team of secular humanists for Afghanistan? Ah, that wouldn’t work either, even with irony, as we should have learned in Vietnam & Iran with our self-serving attempts at “nation building.” ‘
Magical Thinking is forthcoming poetry from reading & writing‘s Joseph Duemer. An example:
Abandoned Bluetick Bitch
Numbed with self-loathing,
we abandon the emissaries
of grace. Chained to a tree
beside the empty rental
she hollowed out a den
for herself & her young.
By the time we found her
the water they'd left her
was a couple of days gone.
When it was gone she would have
slept, not dreaming, letting the pups
nurse her sparse milk
& when the smallest died
she ate it to keep
her strength & cleanse the den,
depriving coy dogs & foxes
an expedient scent.
It's likely there were two more
before we found her.
Ribs covered by a tissue of dry skin,
she was nothing -- a shadow
on the dirt & was just able
to raise her head & take
a little water from my hand
before turning to nose
her three live pups awake.
Reader, it is true, there is
horror everywhere worse
than this & cruelty that beggars
imagination, but this
is my horror, local & particular;
these were my neighbors did this,
who, without even the excuse
of racial or religious psychosis,
committed this wrong. Who live
in this same light & shadow I live in.
Let us kill one another
with heedless abandon -- we deserve it --
but not these poor relations
whose lives are without malice
& whose motives are transparent.
Let us kill one another.
