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SPIN

The braids around her head
make me spin whenever
I look at her picture.

She lies on the white road.
She could be asleep. (I know
she isn’t asleep.) I spin

whenever I look
at the picture. She lies on the
white road, not sleeping,

eyes closed and dusted white.
The braids around her head rest
snaky in the dust, where she could be

any young girl anywhere
who doesn’t sleep in the road unless
it’s unavoidable, because

that’s where the mine
bullet bomb RPG caught
her. She lies in her braids there,

and I’m spinning around her picture —
a fragment, a white fragment in
dusty tears, the long streaks on my cheeks

vapor trails on my skin. The jets above me
drop nothing on their way into Logan.
The roads here are black and wet.

We have no dust here, no white dust here.
I pull my own hair out of its braid
and spin slowly down onto the couch to read

more news. She lies on the front page
of the local daily and the picture
is black and white and she is not sleeping,

though I know I am.