“KM4” Poems & Drawings by Tom Sleigh and Michael Hafftka

Out of a mouth of bone that lives inside

the darkness in a stone like a cricket hidden

somewhere inside a dark house, the incessant stridulation

sounds like the song, I would love to be martyred in

Allah’s Cause and then get resurrected

and then get martyred and then get resurrected

again and then get martyred . . .

If your trouser legs drag on

the ground you’re sullied, you’re unclean.

Be a Fedayeen. Be a Marine. On the other side

of language where none of the concepts stick

the boy with his trousers rolled liked

what he called “the rap music”

and a T-shirt emblazoned with the word “Knicks.”