Mama Condi

Mama Condi* Andy Young (bio) What we’re seeing here is, in a sense, the growing, the birth pangs of a new Middle East.... —Condoleezza Rice who will be yr breathing coach who will be yr daddy when you squat & pant, grunt & open when yr skin splits to make way for bunk- er bust ers, las- er guided miss- iles, for cluster bombs, phosphor, smoke & shrapnel, char & cin- ders, baby bomblets baby Con- di you can call it ME for short Mama Rice Ma ma Condi birthing the new Middle East, its eyes blasted out its tiny heart blown open [End Page 1215] Andy Young Andy Young is co-editor of Meena Magazine, a bilingual Arabic-English literary journal, and author of two chapbooks of poems, mime and All Fires the Fire. Her work has also appeared in a number of periodicals and anthologies, including Cincinnati Review, Nawafez (Lebanon), The Stinging Fly (Ireland), We Begin Here, and Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond. She teaches creative writing at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Footnotes * “Mama Condi” first appeared in We Begin Here: Poems for Lebanon and Palestine, eds. Boullata, Kamal and Kathy Engel (Northhampton: Interlink Books, 2007). Reprinted with permission of the author. Copyright © 2008 Charles H. Rowell

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