The Interrogation

Amit Majmudar

When they leathered his arm to the armrest and began 

 like manicurists in a nail salon 

 he says that he "retreated" from his hand 

 until the part of him that dwelt there once was gone 

 and heard no news from his own outer reaches. 

 In his memoir of those years, he sketches 

 the tricks he used, one of which was "vision." 

 Maybe it's better we present his version: 

 "I imagined my arm as a slope I had to scale, 

 shaft of the humerus as smooth as shale 

 but white like bone and giving way like sand 

 wherever I set foot. I couldn't stand, 

 couldn't take a breather, or I'd ride my own 

 disintegration down and end up on 

 the shore -- which was my hand, my fingernails. 

 I crested my shoulder, rested on its knoll. 

 I looked down then and saw the pain as men 

 charging uphill to where I hid my sense 

 of pain. At once I stomped a foot to see 

 the whole arm crack, calve, crash into the sea, 

 disarticulated, part of me no more. 

 I did this for the other arm and for 

 my feet and testicles and eyes until 

 I found myself on a Pacific atoll 

 that had no latitude, no longitude. 

 I built a hut, I scuttled the one canoe. 

 I saw a sun that weighed a kiloton 

 and the power cord by which it swung."