they will burn all my books and my paintings
maybe my photo-albums from the 1980s –
but they will respect my ceramics, maybe admire
my rugs, some of them made
in the west and the north of their homeland.
It the Russians come, they will steal everything,
maybe even my hearing-aids, my trowel,
my towels, my thirty-year-old espresso machine,
and my bed.
If the Americans come, I will be waterboarded
in vulgar fatuity with no route* of resistance,
because they already own
all forms of expression, all thought;
they will grab and monetize
everything in my head.
*pronounced to rhyme with shout and out and tout.
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