1970
                                                       I meant
the kidnapping by the President, of course.
He took all of us hostage, he had his bombs
in that room where he and we were together,
he had certain demands. But it was a ploy:
like us, he had read the reports, listened to
certain genuine victims' accounts of love
they grew to feel for their captors; he wanted
us to love him. Only that.
 
 
1982
                                            Some of us were
kidnapped by our parents.--How did I mean this?
Not literally, not at first, not until
I met a child whose father gathered him up
once, into his arms, and ran: ran out of the
playground, out of the mother's sight, out of the
neighborhood. She went to court to get the boy
back. What is it like, to be so desired?
Is it like living in a room full of bombs?
 
 
1999

Later, fallen from a window, the boy died.
Later yet: much later: in fact, now, in his
windowless room, a president is holding
himself for ransom. There are many of them.
I cannot keep up with the news, history,
my birthdays. The mother gave away the boy's
undamaged organs, they were small and useful,
and I assume they persist, seventeen years
after his fall, naturalized, in bodies
that know them nearly as well as they know the
backs of their hands.