What happens is this: I go swimming at noon and while I do my laps I think about the failures of American foreign policy. I think about Iran and Iraq and the inhumane circumstances of imperial meddling—so much do I think on these matters that I ship some water into my lungs around lap 10 and my dog gets up (she’s leashed to the lifeguard’s stand) and surveys my situation, worried that I might be doing down for the count.
Yep. I worry when I swim. I think of Saddam Hussein’s ascendancy with CIA help; I think of “shock and awe” and the wholesale destruction of civilian life in Iraq; think of Iran’s long darkness—all a direct result of our installation of the Shah—and above all, the collective immateriality of human beings vs. big oil. I ship a little more water.
I remember that when W’s war in Iraq got underway that as far as I could tell, none of the writers at that year’s Associated Writing Programs conference were talking about the matter. I remembered in turn these lines by the Finnish poet Claes Andersson:
When cities and villages are burning
when rice fields are burning
poets light their candelabra
and write: “freedom burns
in my heart”
But the heart aflame
does not smell burnt
Burning villages do, however, smell
just as burning people do
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 
Elizabeth,
If we’re good Americans, we decry our countries inhumane foreign policies, and keep consuming oil like there’s no tomorrow.
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What, then, is there to do? What do we do?
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