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Poetry by Mary Catherine Harper
Photography by Thomas Born
and Mary Catherine Harper

March 2003

Because we are American
the friendly skies are ours
and we are free

to live on this earth
like borrowers, humbly
requesting space
to plant our crops,
to build our homes,
to plan our industries,
or not

to travel the globe
as gracious tourists,
knowing the worth
of waiters and maids
who sense our whims,
exchanging tip for sense,
or not

to be of the world
and its causes and cares,
hearing the gunshot as
a man of Darfur falls,
seeing the empty hands
of a Cambodian child,
or not

feeling the heartbeat of
a Palestinian strapping
a bomb to her waist,
facing the heavy fact
that we have the means
to offer hope to these,
or not

December 2004

By this time of the year
I have abandoned all my
year-long resolutions:
to slow my walking pace,
to take my hands from
the keyboard and listen.

I have failed to reach after
leaves as they tumble
from oak and maple trees,
forgotten to think of Mosul,
where my nephew sleeps
through my evening hours.

Preoccupied with gift
wrapping, note writing,
kneading the bread and
washing the sheets for
Christmas guests, I am
given to seasonal frenzy.

Still, as the clutter in my hands
crowds You out, You simply
say "come."  And I finally do.

May 2005

Your face small as a child’s,
as if your body had regressed
day by day.

You and your men aware of the
slow starve, waiting for supplies
day by day.

The mess tent and city in ruins,
the tension of men stalking men
day by day.

Homes converted to factories,
cabinets grown fat with bombs
day by day.

Children in that house, and you
entering half armed, disarmed,
your last day.

December 2005

Some doors should not be opened,
like the doors to dank basements
where we all know monsters live.
Or the door that presses you into
Toul Sleng, with its cells of red
brick and mortar, each too small
for stretching limbs, the window
slits too narrow for the creep of light.

Some cells should not be used,
replaced by soft pillows and deep
sleep lasting weeks, months, years
until the madness of Pol Pot is fit
into a straight jacket and you are
wakened far from that dark brick
nightmare, safe from any genocide
lurking on the other side of a door.

Some scenes should not be dreamed,
like any scene in your airless cubicle,
for any thought there will kill you,
as will the idea of the next room,
the room the guards drag you to,
the room of chains and tables
and that tray of tools for working
your body's mangled renovation.

Some monsters should not be battled.
Better you curled up for the duration,
unbreathing in that other red room,
the expanse of your mother's womb,
as safe from dreaming as I am safely
flying home to the Nrthwest Ohio
swamp where the only monster in my
basement hums and pumps water..

February 2006

Dear Mrs. Hin,
I am wondering how
your fence is holding up,
and the cow, will it have a calf
soon, as here in America,
even though your spring is
another time of year?

I think of you often,
and your grandchildren.
Chanthy, who is your faithful
eyes, her face suddenly
sad when you moaned how
she would never get
an education.

Chathan and his brother
Channy, so proud of those
new bikes, which will take them
far away from you, to school
and life, but first simply
into the freedom
of speed.

And Pov, so young, but
mirroring the desperation
of your face as you spoke
of his mother’s death, your
blinding infection, your family’s
need for sweet cow’s milk
to grow strong bones.

And the bones
of your husband, sons,
resting softly, I hope,  
in the killing field nearby.
I cannot stop thinking about
them, and especially you, with
your overgrown heart.

Sincerely every day,
A friend on the other side
of your world

There must have been a blinding realization
just before the bus hit the guard rail, the concrete,
and flew out, afloat on the air above southbound 75,
that he would die in exactly two more seconds
or survive and live to regret what was unfolding
before him, the pavement below rising to greet him,
his wife, and all those young men, sleeping their
way through the graying of dawn, through the end
of their sudden, startling lives of school and sex,
living for baseball, the lure that brought them
to this moment come crashing down into traffic
not of their design, not of their desire, not of his will

April 2008

You tell me of course it is possible
to have such different experiences
and still know how the other feels

But when I see that photo of you
standing beside your husband,
your sunglasses hiding eyes
full, near to overflowing,
you holding onto his strong
arm as if it were the only thing
between you and the ground,
your home, what is left of it,
in a heap of painted wood and
smashed chairs and, curiously,
your favorite pink floral curtains
still attached to a window
set in a wall that leans
against what used to be
the neighbor’s house,
and the date stamp 2005 9 16

I am reminded that what I feel
is hearsay loss, a hand-me-down
emotion, traveling, as it were,
safely in the eye of the storm,
while you today 2008 4 8
still have no home with pink
curtains, only a bright tarp
spread across a metal frame
marking the place where
you used to cook and sing
and sleep oh so soundly.