Feminist Studies

Feminist Studies 42, no. 1. © 2016 by Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes  HeiDi anDrea reStrePo rHoDeS Helix/Womb/House (For Basra, for Fallujah) Child, born unmoving in the stillness of an echo, a gasp bouncing off the roof of your mother’s lung, arriving in twisted arrangement, the bouquet of your limbs, wilted, injured flowers peddling unsung lullabies to those who can still cry in the ancient language of conferencing birds, these imperial feet no longer occupy your weary rooms, though occupation lingers in the scabbed & pussing wounds, ground holes, shadows, ghost limbs, dusty photographs of the missing, chemical downpours shining glossy on your tattered rooftops, this planted forest of the Metal Q1 swallowed by your scratched eyelids in the ochre haze of the dawn star shamal morning, that jaundiced blight stomaching ships at sea & errant roads, this la’nat dripping from your faucets, swigged before morning prayer, this cursed deprivation, genocide unleashed and scattering. 1. Depleted Uranium (DU), otherwise known as Q-Metal, depletalloy or D-38, is a radioactive heavy metal with proven genotoxicity. DU munitions dumped in Iraq by the US and UK militaries have been linked to sharp increases in rates of stillbirths, miscarriages, congenital birth defects, and cancer in Iraq since 2001. The United States and its major stakeholders continue to deny any correlation and have not taken action to clean up the contamination . The legacy of radioactive toxicity left by the United States and the United Kingdom and the subsequent destruction of the reproductive capacities of the Iraqi people must be viewed as a form of social cleansing that is a very real and present effect of US militarization and its attendant human rights abuses. For further information, see the 2013 report by Ikv Pax Christi, “In a State of Uncertainty: Impact and Implications of the Use of Depleted Uranium in Iraq,” http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/ina -state-of-uncertainty. 250 Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes Child, this is the silver bayonet that pierces the tenanted womb, the mammoth brute warping your mother’s vast and primal atlas, calling you to sea before the tide has waned. Child, we have made stones of you unborn, stones and fleshly crooked maps, cartographies of lost chromosomes, conquered bodies, stolen bricks of time, we have banished Allah from your epithelial cells, cast Hajirah to another barren valley, we have made a house of your DNA and placed it under siege, we have carpet bombed its streets & left your wet heart alone to shrivel in the rubble of this shattered gallery, helix, womb, home. ...