You don’ t get everything back.
Is today morning or night? The radio voice says
the composer is changing the place home is.
When they try to put a tube down her throat,
the woman beside me sobs. Nurses probe
a vein as she thrashes, call the Hmong translator.
Once a boy told me, in Laos he sat in a tree
all night. Father pay me dollar for every man I’ m shooting.
When there’ s water to cross, the fish, caught,
get needled through gill slits. Down the dark hall,
machines bleat at each bed. Eyes open and shut: flashes,
detachment, vitreous gel. Her son, seven years old,
comes after school, peels oranges, watches football,
changing the place home is.