IF SADDAM HUSSEIN AND I MATCHED ON TINDER,

I imagine he’d send me a GIF of a car bomb, a cotton pink explosion. I would say, I cannot peel my eyes away. Mashallah, little girl, he’d say, then send a heart emoji, car emoji, clown emoji, peach emoji, bomb emoji. I would know what he was trying to say and so I’d block him, but after that everyone I swiped would look a little like him, a little bit more like him.
 
 

IF I OPENED MY MOUTH IN THE MIRROR OF OIL AND SAW SADDAM,

He’d be twinned and hanging where my tonsils should be, personal evil, he would sing a song I’d recognize because I have been playing it on YouTube: Our father, indeed, Saddam, is our father/With him at home there is no fear/Our father, the kind Saddam, is our father/With him at home there is no fear.
 
 
 
Tracy Fuad is an MFA candidate at Rutgers–Newark. Her chapbook Facts About Saddam Hussein is coming out this spring with Txtbooks.