I’ve lived in three suicidal nation-states,
counting the one I was made in, not counting
the country choked off from the maps
but which wants to live, and does, and so,
admittedly, my sample size is small, but still,
the triumphant self-demolishing urge does seem,
you know, alive and well around these parts, the general
memorial-museum-erected-atop-the-ruins-
of-massacred-village vibe that characterizes
what I’ve come to understand as citizenship, or at least
the embossing on the bill. “Did you kill him
                yourself?” grinned a bebuttoned patriot
on my first domestic flight once back
from Palestine, extending a hand across the aisle,
as it were, to his neighbor’s fatigues the day
Bin Laden tipped into the ocean. Every empire
                rears up in the anticipatory exultation of denying
it’s offing itself, is what I think, but what
do I know, I’m just one person whose blood is stamped
with the concurrent tin-foil seals of a Marxist philosopher
and a CIA operative, and that’s
just two of the men.

Robin Myers, “Parts”