"We had to do it. These people were against Saddam Hussein. If we got orders to punish him, we would go and do it. [If we were told] to cut off his tongue, we would do it.”
Abdul Kareem Kassim, ‘A Prosaic Description of Unspeakable Torture.’ Washington Post, 22 April, 2003
It happens as it always has.
The patient is bundled
into the operating room
kicking and screaming
their rights, these wrongs, of art and the obscene.
Really, it’s a last chance
to offend, to speak free.
No. No one is listening.
They’ve heard it all before.
Poor thing, our subject here
has no idea
the problem is there, there.
No. No time for bedside
manners, the story’s
moral is decided. Final.
Stone-faced nurses pin the patient down and pray,
whispers steadying
the doctor’s hand while
extraction is performed.
Easy now, easy does it,
with scalpel, axe or stone,
they sever at the palate,
the tuft of flesh
just where the phonetic You
is pressed into breath.
Of course, it’s a success.
In all, a decent act. They hold up
the gibbering thing in calipers
as it draws back.
How this shrivelled bit, this mor—
sel could cause such offence
is the root of the bother.
(Though these problems tend to stem
from articulate mouths in other rooms.)
As you might expect, the patient,
breathing out, expires.
They throw the straggler
into the corner.
Under sterile light,
the heap of pinks
are washed white.
They cart in
the next case.
Always time for one more.