I dreamt I had a twin
But it’s just me now.
Nothing really happened,
Nothing to write home about, so I don’t.
It’s just me down here and I don’t answer the phone.

*

In the court of the Assyrian kings,
Me and the other girls singing and dancing, our golden bracelets glistening;
And all of this could last forever,
The braziers are burning, the night is heavy with pleasure
And my body is beautiful and I am very young.

Nineveh, Nineveh.
Flowing water,
Falling clay.
Nineveh.

The word of the Lord came to Jonah to say
“Arise, go ye to Nineveh,
That great city,
And tell them that their wickedness has come up before me.”
But Jonah fled from the word of the Lord, paid his fare on a ship to Tarshish.

And the Lord sent a wind and the wind formed a storm
And the sailors threw what they could overboard.
When they found Jonah he was sleeping,
Said, “Wake up, man, don’t you know you ought to be praying?”
And they cast lots to see whose god was the cause,
To know who to appease to be free of the storm and safe to port.

Clutching the short straw, raising his voice against the rain,
Jonah said, “Cast me into the sea and the sea shall be calm again.”
And as he sank into the water, the storm ceased
And Jonah was swallowed by something from the deep
And three days he was held in the belly of Hell,
Hid from the Lord in the darkness, he prayed,

Nineveh, Nineveh.
Flowing water,
Falling clay.
Nineveh.

Nineveh was built on the east bank of the Tigris.
Nineveh was built on chapter ten, verse eleven.
Nineveh was built on a faultline that laid it low.
Nineveh was sacked and rebuilt many times.
An aqueduct brought water over seventy miles
To irrigate Nineveh’s eighteen canals.

In 2015, the Islamic State
Captured Mosul and laid to waste the ruins of Nineveh
And what was not bulldozed was sold
By hypocrites, gangsters who would not know a soul
If it stood before them stripped of its skin.

Nineveh, Nineveh.
Falling water,
Flowing clay.
Nineveh.

I heard them ringing the bells to warn of the Hell
To which we were going, whence Jonah was spat.
They cried in the street,, “The king has decreed none shall eat! And sat
In a pile of ash for a throne and taken sackcloth for a hat!”
And Jonah walked to the wilderness above the city
And under the sun, the Lord asked if he did well to be angry.

In the pink dawn, as the sun rose,
I served the girls, averting my gaze, as they laid in repose.
I carried a jug of wine and for each a cup
And the drink cooled their sweating bodies as the sun came up,
And as they fell asleep in one another’s bangled arms
I couldn’t see how they’d done the Lord any harm.

*

And sometimes I was ready,
Sometimes I begged for one more day.
I have cried in the desert
And sung in the halls of

Nineveh, Nineveh.
Flowing water,
Falling clay.
Nineveh.