Sumerian Angel Over Iraq
Janet Bowdan
—for Marianne Thespina Connolly
1. The Sumerian Angel, huge, takes up
most of the sky, the funerary ornaments
like tin flowers in her headdress, her four
pairs of soft butterfly wings, her helpless
shrug of gauze scarf. What can she do
rising out of the desert sands, looming above
the ancient Ziggurat her temple? Beside her
the oil refinery fires are the only color.
2. My grandmother walked into the Baghdad Alliance
Francaise dripping wet with rain and my grandfather
fell in love. 1932.
3. The Sumerian Angel’s mask is stone. She
has been watching for decades. She was used to seeing
the Shi’a Muslims as everpresent as the Euphrates,
the Tigris rivers, there for thousands of years, and now
displaced. In October 1932, Iran became independent
of the Ottoman Empire. Governments come
and go, oil extracted from her desert, a ground rich
but not fertile. The CIA reports water control projects
have dried up or diverted feeder streams, left soil degradation,
erosion. The Sumerian Angel looks for the Shi’a Muslims.
She sees dust storms, sand storms, floods. She sees
the oil refineries burning against the sand.
