Justin Sirois is a writer living in Baltimore, Maryland. His books include Secondary Sound, MLKNG SCKLS, and Falcons on the Floor, written with Iraqi refugee Haneen Alshujairy. He also runs the Understanding Campaign with Haneen and co-directs Narrow House. Justin has received several individual Maryland State Art Council grants and a Baker "b" grant in 2011.
An excerpt from Falcons on the Floor appears in Issue Thirty-Three of The Collagist.
Here, Justin Sirois answers questions "in the form of excerpts"--with further excerpts from Falcons on the Floor.
1. What is writing like?
Fleeing blindly in the failing dusk, Khalil and I scramble free, the burning city behind us. We scale toppled walls and blown brick hovels. We run through market squares and the crippled township, to the river running west and closer.
All I can think of is Rana and how she’ll assume I’m dead if I don’t contact her soon. Her family was smart to flee to Syria before the real war began. Before the siege and the fire within it.
Khalil pushes my backpack from behind. We reached the stone plateau, slipping on talcum, hints of gypsum.
The night sky crashes white. We turn toward Fallujah. Empty steel drums roll under clouds. A few drop on the town, sending ripples through our teeth. Great gales of depleted uranium scatter like seed. Deltas of oil smoke leech the sky.
We breathe like dogs.
The river is at our backs.
In the quiet muck, we’re alone.
2. What isn’t writing like?
We took position after clearing the building, SnackWell covering the exit while I waited for the target.
We could see all of Ramadi from that roof.
I remember the dump mostly.
Cooked by the evening sun, moldering dunes of garbage fumed putrid and persistent. Westward gales flapped great aprons of rot over the rooftop. A recent avalanche had breached a hole in the garbage mountain, releasing pus and milky seepage into the breeze. No one dared roam too close to its perimeters spread deep – and neither did we – as concoctions of boiled piss wafted off the range. It only added to the misery of the inflicted city.
It was perfect. Who would spot us here, three stories above the sizzling junk?
“Anything?”
“Target’s in route,” I said.
We knew where they were going.
“Target has entered site Calico.”
Site Calico was what we called the café. They’d been there night after night.
3. When you do it, why?
Embers sparkled, perishing in the wind. The rancid tang of phosphorus chlorinated their tongues until it was all they could taste. Khalil turned. He didn’t lean down to retrieve the rifle.
4. When you don’t, why?
It was my mother.