The Newborn Dead

by James Brooks

a gas
warfare
instrument
said the subcommittee
to the executive committee
on the Use of Radioactive Materials
Department of War, 1943
and so it would be
newborn dead faces
bloody blobs
where eyes
might have seen
snarling gashes
where lips
might have suckled
a dying mother’s breast
gone wrong inside
down where we come from
there
is a poison
eating her alive
since the bombs
and bunker-busters
and cruise missiles
puffed white-orange
mushrooms
to the clear blue
and our uranium dust
settled down
to work
exterminating the genome
of Afghanistan
bloating fetal legs
into potato stumps
erupting purpled galls
from unborn skulls
spawning translucent
pixie bodies
graced
with alien heads
turning wombs
to horrors
nurturing monsters
squeezing lumps
of radiologically
democratically
economically
destroyed
life
smashing cradles
sowing cancers
leukemias
disease
reaping wreckage
of a people’s DNA
aerosolized on impact
on purpose
on target
off target
it doesn’t really
matter
'it’s just
another way of killing people’
said the Army source
not ‘collateral damage’
in the war on
subterranean
terror
no
it’s simpler
more elegant
two weapons in one
immediate
and time-released
death
penetrates earth
on impact
degrades genetic infrastructure
forever
for us
the strategic
and biological
advantage
of undeclared
nuclear war.

Notes:

Death Made In America: Impacts of Depleted Uranium Contamination on Afghanistan's Children, Dr. Mohammed Daud Miraki, Centre for Research on Globalization, 5/9/2006
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=DAU20060509&articleId=2412

The Quantitative Analysis of Uranium Isotopes in the Urine of the Civilian Population of Eastern Afghanistan after Operation Enduring Freedom, Asaf Durakovic, Military Medicine/Uranium Medical Research Centre (abstract) http://www.umrc.net/pdf/quantitative_analysis_afghanistan.pdf

Uranium Radiation Levels in Afghanistan Not Attributable to Depleted Uranium,
Global Research/Uranium Medical Research Center, 6/5/2003
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/UMR306B.html

Afghans' uranium levels spark alert, BBC, 5/22/2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3050317.stm

Memorandum to: Brigadier General L. R. Groves From: Drs. Conant, Compton, and Urey
United States Engineer Office, War Department, 1943
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/Groves-Memo-Manhattan30oct43.htm

James Brooks serves as webmaster for Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel (www.vtjp.org). He can be contacted at jamiedb@wildblue.net.