“Beheaded,” I heard
on the radio in Canada,
driving home.
New York tabloids
stamp your name
in dark Helvetica.
Your death tells us
Everything they think
We need to know
About Syria.
Scrubbing the floor,
the rag I’m using was once
a t-shirt; it reads
“UMass Basketball.”
Once, I hit the shot
On the floor at half time
And climbed back up the stands
To high fives with all the guys.
Basketball, Boyden gym:
the gray standard-issue shorts
we wore then, writers
on the pick and roll.
You were fiction, I
was poetry. Our paths hardly
crossed. Only after grad school,
journalism called us both.
I went local and you, global.
In the newspapers now, you
are always wearing aviator shades,
flak jackets. In my memory, you
always had a square jaw, perpetual
shadow, that deep, gentle voice.
I didn’t know
you that well,
I didn’t know
we were almost
the same age,
I didn’t know
I should have been
paying attention
to the number of days
gone missing, to
the blue mosque door,
the Arabic graffiti on the walls,
the labyrinth of bombed out buildings
and rubble, the sound
you hear in the turret
when you take fire.
For you I’d like to drink away
the deadlines at father’s hours
at a bar in a sleepy town.
I’m convinced, no,
I’ve convinced myself you
were there, and I
I gave you five.
