Weekly Poem: 'Fear and Greed Index:'

**By Daniel Khalastchi** We are rushed from our dinner. Men with axes tear down a wall near the kitchen and a line is formed out- side to give names and brief statements. _What_ _did you see?_ I saw red dresses on women saw hands under tables. _What_ _did you hear?_ Two chefs in a fight. _Were you aware_ _a child was being held_ _behind the drywall?_ Yes. Be- tween courses I would go to make phone calls -- watch her fed through cracks in the baseboards, pushing back bags of gray stool and dark urine. _Why didn't you_ _say anything?_ Who would believe me? My eyes have been nested. Robins and grackles weave wheat to my lashes and twice a week I find eggs in my leg. _In your_ _leg?_ It opens like a pinata. Always at noon. I twitch and I cramp and my tibia folds with a hinge to my ankle. When it happens, teenagers from my apartment complex wait in the courtyard with waxed twine and buckets for a neighbor to wash off the sinew. _We're sorry_ _sir, we thought this was_ _a costume._   Daniel Khalastchi is a first-generation Iraqi Jewish American and was born and raised in Iowa. His book, "'Manoleria,'":http://www.tupelopress.org/books/manoleria won the Tupelo Press/Crazyhorse First Book Prize earlier this year. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a recent fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Khalastchi is a visiting assistant professor of English at Marquette University. He also co-edits "Rescue Press":http://www.rescue-press.org/. The video above was filmed at AWP's 2011 Conference & Bookfair in Washington, D.C. Special thanks to the "Association of Writers & Writing Programs":http://www.awpwriter.org/. Camera and audio work by the NewsHour's Crispin Lopez and Kiran Moodley.