Terrorism

At a college in Dearborn, Michigan, I read a poem about watching girls at camp hold their breaths under the showers so I could see their breasts swell. Some people call Dearborn a hub of “terrorist” activity. I’ve placed the word terrorist between quotation marks because “Arab” or “Muslim” or “people who look like the terrorists we fear” is what they mean. In the poem about the camp I also use quotation marks around the words “pussy” and “chicken-shit,” but for different reasons — I’m waiting in line to jump over a dam into a river where other boys have drowned, and I hesitate, until someone shouts “pussy” and “chicken-shit” and you don’t need me to tell you what I did, what I had to do. A famous poet says for a speaker to express authority, he must possess three virtues, one of which is passion. After the reading a young man approached me. He turned out to be the younger brother of someone I knew and wrote a poem about, a lifeguard who saved a drowning girl. The child pulled from the pool could have been a boy — I don’t remember, it doesn’t matter. I care about what I’m saying — that matters. Passion is a deep-seated conviction, says the famous poet. You need to believe that I believe. I told the young man in Dearborn about his brother saving a life, as if he didn’t already know. He listened, politely, until I stopped talking and then he said I was out of line and had acted inappropriately. How, I asked. He said I shouldn’t use words like that. Which words, I asked. He was getting flustered. I asked him again. I wanted him to say “pussy” and “chicken-shit.” He said I should not use words like that in front of women. By “women,” he meant Arab and Muslim women. Maybe he meant all women. I don’t know, I didn’t ask. A lot of Arabs and Muslims live in Dearborn. That’s why some people think of it as a hotbed of Islamic terrorism. The phrase “a hotbed of Islamic terrorism” should probably appear between quotes every time people use it, even if they are Arab or Muslim, like me. The other virtues a speaker should possess, says the famous poet, are discrimination and inclusiveness. By “discrimination” he means the speaker should come to his position without ignoring but considering opposed positions, and finding them wanting. By “inclusiveness” he means the speaker immediately sees connections between the subject at hand and other issues. Also, the speaker needs to make the reader believe he is doing his subject justice, that he is relating it to the world. This makes his voice communal, speaking not for any community but with the goal of making communities, the first of which is that of speaker and reader. The young man speaking on behalf of Arab and Muslim women told me that my poems were “indecent” and “immoral,” that I should be ashamed, that I was a terrible Muslim. “Go fuck yourself,” is what I wanted to say, but — maybe he was right — so I smiled, I thanked him for listening, and I told him I loved his brother, and, “Please, will you say I said hello.”