On September 5, 2014, NPR ran an by critic Juan Vidal titled, “Where Have All the Poets Gone?” which questioned whether American poets still produce political work, and suggested that “literary [political] provocation in America is . . . at a low.” Because I find this assessment of contemporary American letters to be very incomplete, I wanted to take the opportunity to create a dialogue on the subject by curating a series of compelling political poems from contemporary American poets. I christened this series “Political Punch” as an affectionate reflection on the cocktail of poets who decided to honor me with their participation in my little Infoxicated Corner; it was intended to celebrate the glorious mix of poetics, voices, and life experiences all being shaken and stirred into a sense of community and conversation, being distilled into burning gulps of experience for the reader. Leaving aside all the boozed-up metaphors, it was also intended to celebrate my experience of American letters, in all their willingness and ability to pack a political punch.
This piece, “Unchecked Savagery,” by Glenn Shaheen, is in fact the titular piece from a collection of his flash fiction. However, since my first reading of it two years ago, it recurs to me again & again as a prose poem (I’ve always had the blessing/curse of blurring genre lines reflexively in my brain). I wanted to include it here because I think it offers a special combination of voice, aesthetic approach, and subject matter that adds even greater dimension to this Political Punch series (which has already been greatly blessed by an influx of voices, aesthetic approaches, and subject matter). This poem critically assesses American creation and maintenance of the Arab Other; it scrutinizes our relationship not only to that concept, but the way in which that concept becomes an insidiously titillating form of group entertainment, fumbling for the blurred genre lines between a newscast and an episode of 24 and a serious, incapacitating illness that prevents any real understanding or communication.
The leaves don’t actually return to the tree. Those are new leaves. The ones that died are still dead.
Unchecked Savagery
A man, an Arab man, has taken the tallest building in the
downtown corridor hostage. The whole building. He shot a
couple of people who were getting cookies from the Subway on
the first floor. What he doesn’t know, because the FBI has cleverly
detonated an EMP disabling all communication devices
in the building is that one man with extensive Navy SEAL
training has been deposited on the top floor of the building,
and is slowly working his way down. The news crews keep us
updated with colorful graphics and thumping brass rhythms.
The news is certain of his motives. Religion, or vengeance for a
small parcel of land, or jealousy, an attack against us because
we possess the most good anybody could imagine. We fill in
the gaps in the story. When I was sixteen I went downstairs
to rest. I became sick. I couldn’t move for a week. If I stood
up, I would pass out and wake fifteen minutes later. Reason
to feathers. Or was it even a week? The bottom fell out. It
was only motion and breath for some number of days. There
are only fragments left. When I called to my mother for help,
she couldn’t hear. It was as if I were in a box in a field. When I
asked for food, she brought water. When I asked for water, she
brought me a towel and a magazine. The Navy SEAL makes
it to the floor with the hostages and terrorist. We have a
live news beed. The door opens. There are two naked bloody
legs, and the feed is cut suddenly. We pray the body is not of
the terrorist. Yes, we want him dead, but on our terms, and
only after he has paid in blood and sear. A storm alert at the
bottom of the screen warns us that there could tonight be hail.
Glenn Shaheen is the author of the poetry collection Predatory (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), and the flash fiction chapbook Unchecked Savagery (Ricochet Editions, 2013). Individual pieces have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Ploughshares, The New Republic, and elsewhere.
