Stone, Nomi

United States, (b. 1981)

Human Technology

  1. Sunlit and dangerous, this country road.
  2. We are follicle and meat and terror and
  3.  
  4. the machines leave their shells naked on the ground.
  5. One soldier makes a museum in his basement.
  6.  
  7. Each mannequin in brass, incombustible coats:
  8. I am walking between their blank faces,
  9.  
  10. their bullets traveling at the speed of sound. One soldier
  11. who roasted a pig on his porch barbecuing until sinews were tender
  12.  
  13. tells me he waited above the Euphrates and if they tried to pass
  14. even after we told them not to, they deserved it: pop (deserve it); pop
  15.  
  16. (deserve it). Euphrates, your dark tunnel out is rippling around us.
  17. In the war, a child approaches a tank as one soldier counts the child’s
  18.  
  19. steps. In the town, I drink a bottle of wine with that soldier
  20. among barber shops, boot repair shops. Is she my friend? I weep to her. I’ve lost
  21.  
  22. who I thought I loved and she says I did
  23. this thing and to whom was that child beloved?
  24.  
  25. Find common ground, the soldiers say. Humanize
  26. yourselves. Classify the norm of who you’re talking to, try
  27.  
  28. to echo it. Do this for your country, says one soldier; we
  29. are sharks wearing suits of skin. Zip up.
  30.  
  31. This spring, in the chilly, barely blooming city
  32. Solmaz says enough of this emptied word “empathy.”
  33.  
  34. Ask for more: for rage. For love. On the porch,
  35. as the sun goes, the dark pools around us and one
  36.  
  37. soldier says it is nightfall. I am tired. I did not mean for it to go on
  38. this long. That soldier across the table, we lock eyes.
  39.  
  40. He tells me: in the occupied land we are the arm, they
  41. are the weapon. The weapon
  42.  
  43. in this case is a person. Choose a person
  44. who knows who is bad. Make them
  45.  
  46. slice open the skin of their country: only they can
  47. identify the enemy. Say yes or no: if a man squints while
  48.  
  49. under the date palm; if a woman does not swing her arms
  50. while walking. Sir, my child was not with the enemy.
  51.  
  52. He was with me in this kitchen, making lebna at home.
  53. The yogurt still is fresh on his wrist.

 Nomi Stone. Kill Class. North Adams, MA: Tupelo Press (2019).

On the 4th of July in the Empire

  1. The soldiers, as a joke,
  2. bring a pig on the plane,
  3. to tandem-jump
  4. with one of the dudes.
  5. Bucking, manpig
  6. twists through air
  7.  
  8. til pig won’t man can’t.
  9. Skin, socket, a tremble of teat.
  10. They tell me this in a bar
  11. right outside of these woods
  12. where old boys act-out
  13. a rape to teach war’s
  14.  
  15. do’s and don’ts, slapping
  16. their hands together—
  17. are you in on this joke?
  18. Do you love your country,
  19. Gypsy? Drink up before
  20. the animal lands. To be
  21.  
  22. a gypsy I want to say is to wander
  23. this world. I beg you, you there
  24. pinning the body to the wall.

 Nomi Stone. Kill Class. North Adams, MA: Tupelo Press (2019).

About the Poet:

Nomi Stone, United States, (b. 1981), is a poet and an anthropologist. She has a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia and an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College, Asheville, NC. Stone is currently an Assistant Professor in Poetry at the University of Texas, Dallas.

Stone is the author of two poetry collections, Stranger’s Notebook (TriQuarterly 2008) and Kill Class (2019). Her first anthropology monograph Pinelandia: Human Technology and American Empire/An Anthropology and Field-Poetics of Contemporary War is forthcoming in 2022.

Winner of a Pushcart Prize and a Fulbright, Stone’s poems appear recently in Guernica, Poetry Northwest, Drunken Boat, and Best American Poetry 2016, Plume, New Republic, New England Review, and elsewhere. [DES-04/22]

Additional information:

 • Biographies here are short. Yet all the poets presented have fascinating lives. And they have created a bountiful trough of treasures beyond these works. Please root on about those you enjoy! I hope you find something informative, meaningful or that provokes your further contemplation.

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