he asks me what i do i tell him i work for a small company that makes packaging for— he stops me midsentence no not what you do to pay the bills what drives you crazy what keeps you up at night i tell him i write he asks me to show him something i take the tips of my fingers place them inside his forearm and graze them down his wrist goose bumps rise to the surface i see his mouth clench muscles tighten his eyes pore into mine as though i’m the reason for making them blink i break gaze just as he inches toward me i step back so that’s what you do you command attention my cheeks flush as i smile shyly confessing i can’t help it.
We present this work in honor of the Tunisian holiday, Revolution Day.
Najet Adouani Tunisian b. 1956
I only wish I had wings Wings like those of the angels so that I can fly over seas and rivers, Hills and deserts… I ask my soul to borrow me her flames, I need that only for a short while, I want to walk in that glow for me. I wish to have powerful wings, Stronger than the wings of birds, I need wings as vast as infinite space… wings as vast as history. Yes, I wish I had wings of clay and of fire, purple and gold, silver and tin, iron and diamonds, wings heavy and light. I wish to had wings which hold me over the universe; everywhere I can be a loaf of bread in the hand Of a starved infant… A handkerchief wipes of the tears of a bereaved of child. A smile breaks night’s fear, A hymn of a lost Bedouin Entertains a peace’s caravan.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 75th birthday.
Anabel Torres Colombian b. 1948
These are the sweet girls who go to the matinee. These are the sweet girls prepared to be the echo, prepared to be the small round pebble in the center stirring the concentric circles while the waves move further and further away.
These are the girls with smooth skin and a soul even smoother and, without curves.
Why this concern with a total stranger who opens and shuts doors at the supermarket
why bother hoping he has a great day that some customer amongst those who throng in and out will see in him a special talent that catapults him to stardom that on his way home he’ll find a winning lottery ticket in the gutter that through the door I’ve watched him open thirty times his favourite actress will enter smiling and (o miracle!) grant him a great big hug
why don’t I concentrate on something worthwhile as I wait in the car for Luis in front of the busiest shopping mall in Managua where a worker attempts to earn a living hauling the heavy chain of trivia
only to be exposed to my intense observation an accessory to my imagining of another’s life in which this poem might be of use to an Everyman who has won my fleeting affection.
This microphone with its cable coiling around it, bows to me. I walk up to it, open my eyes open my book open my mouth. That’s right, I open my mouth wide and begin my story. They say I speak too softly, that I am practically mumbling, that they can’t hear the screams piercing. I open my memory like a rotten cantaloupe.
They say I have not managed to forcefully convey the pitiless rage of the cattle prod. They say that in matters such as this nothing must be left open to the imagination or to doubt. I take out the Amnesty report and begin speaking through that ink. I urge: “Read.” I, in my turn, coil around my bowing accomplice, this microphone. I urge action as a prescription, information as an infallible antidote and, one every knot is untied, I recite my verses. I resist. I am whole. This microphone with its cable coiling around it, bows to me.
We present this work in honor of the Mexican holiday, Revolution Day.
Estrella del Valle Mexican b. 1971
Juliette Seven Five: A country lies at the bottom of the maps, between the nooks of lineups, on the Mike Romeo One Nine frequency, Ninety-two degrees west. Seventeen degrees north. With many of the seas that lash in its favor or against it, depending on which side of the map you’re on. A country with eternal depressions, blue mountains, and incorporeal dreams above sea level. A country with imperceptible people, with kids, men, women who get lost when they are so young who are at the intersection of the objective. A country with thousands of migrants who try not to see each other while they cross the line between sanity and the greatest country. A country with a single chain of communication, a single bank, a single army of God, a single tiny family that manages the stage of a tiny nation like its ambitions and it has a king, albeit a little one.
A land slumbers under a blanket of coffeed weeds With lashings of withered wreaths numb on gravestones A broken fence, a lone gatekeeper, a shroud of trees Keep the memoir of ghosts who can only sleep When relatives insist on visiting, bringing new flowers Which they then water with tears and dress in silence
The broken branches which are gathered under trees The faded epitaphs speaking to the sun about memory The dried leaves cracking with the reticence of rainfall The shade from the high weeds crowded into themselves The people crouching to straighten fallen headstones On their beloveds’ graves, then murmur their departure
The footfalls fading from the streets The trees departing from the avenues The sweat evaporating from the skin Remote traffic sounding like gossip
A lone gatekeeper standing by the gate Adding up thoughts of differences and loss.
We present this work in honor of the Moroccan holiday, Green March Day.
Ikram Abdi Moroccan 21st century
You washed from the colors of the rainbow You stare woefully in the strangeness of your face Bored of the daily that ambushes you But there you go And the broken steps of time you ascend To inhabit the cities of your suspended strangeness To rest on a cold soil
It might end, this night, with a translucent fog covering the tops of the cypresses, like last night. Or it might end with a pale morning, crowned with a laurel wreath of terror and with an urge to run away, like the morning of that one summer night. Where does the road home start from? From the last house that I escaped from? Or from the last hurriedly booked hotel room?
I remember clearly: his hand was around my neck. The cloudy look in his eyes. The moon was alone outside, with no poems to praise its illusory beauty. I remember, at the same time, the delicate light flowing into the room through the open windows. We were in our room. We were together and his hand was around my neck, on that night and the other nights like it throughout the years, his hand pressing on my soul.
The road winds through the trees. There are scattered farms on each side of the road, and I see ducks and other farm animals here and there. When my heart starts to pound at the heights, I close my eyes. I remember my eyes clouding over from the pain. The scene in front of me is extravagantly beautiful. My eyes drink in the greenery at every bend, until I forget the hands that choked me one summer night. I feel dizzy from the extravagant beauty of the road as it ascends toward Bouisse, and I forget.
They say that children with iron deficiency will peel the lead paint off the walls and eat it. What about souls with love deficiency? They feed on the bark of trees—every single one, the trees on the road as well as the forest trees. Souls that are hungry for love touch trees, get close to them and embrace them. I did this every time, in every trip I took after becoming free of him, and from his hand and the frying pan. Every time I stopped the rental car and get out to embrace the trees.
A life can completely change between one night and another.
Tonight, it is Christmas night and time is passing lightly, carrying the smell of warm mulled wine, fragrant with cinnamon and lemon slices. Lovers, regardless of their different colors and ages, are decorating the night. Lovers, children, old people, women with their short skirts and transparent black stockings. Santa Claus hanging on the walls, in a pose that gives the impression that he is about to ascend toward windows to sneak inside the houses to pass out his presents. Celebrations are everywhere and the night is dancing with its light, like a carol I can’t quite place. The night is heavy with Arabic words in the back streets of Toulouse and the big Algerian flag that is flapping high from the balcony of one of the apartments.
Things happen, in the night stained with light.
“It was my favorite frying pan.”
I repeated this sentence in front of the judge, in front of the people in the courthouse. And a few months earlier I had repeated to the policeman at the police station and a few hours before that, that night, I repeated it to my neighbor Lamia when I fled to her house.
“It was my favorite frying pan—it never sticks.”
I repeated the same sentence for days while looking through my tears to the dented frying pan. I held on to it, clung to it with a shaky hand, with a heavy head and a bruised and scratched up body. I carried it as a guilty verdict, I carried it as an accusation, as a life buoy.
The day I kissed him for the first time on the beach, secretly behind the rock of lovers, I didn’t know that I would choose him out of all men to be my husband. I also didn’t know that he would beat me whenever I said no to him. I didn’t know that the word “no” sends him into an insane rage. And I didn’t know that my favorite frying pan would become his weapon. That night when I shook the hungry bird of desire off of me and dared to tell him no, my life flipped upside down. In the beginning, he strangled me and tried to pin me on the bed under him. I don’t know how I kicked him and slipped away from him. I frantically gasped for air. I don’t know why I ran to the kitchen. We stood there almost naked. Looking at each other silently. I looked with my eyes for something, anything, and when I saw the bread knife he had already beaten me to the frying pan. The blows that hit my head reverberated like the blows of a sledge hammer. The darkness of the night covered me as I surrendered and let my body collapse on the kitchen floor. A thousand stars exploded in a supernova inside my head before I passed out.
When I chose him, like when I was choosing the frying pan, I didn’t know that I was kissing the beast that would break me like a wild horse. The frog didn’t become a prince but I became a porcupine shorn of its quills, unable to defend itself.
When I woke up later that night I couldn’t believe that I was still alive. I also couldn’t believe that he was able to just go to sleep after what happened. I rushed to my neighbor Lamia. I left my son with her. The blood running from my nose was hot and I could barely stand up from the headache. But still I left the house and went to the police station. I didn’t take anything with me but my body and the frying pan that he hit me with. The frying pan became an extension of my right hand. It was like a strange new organ that I added to my body, to help me balance as I dragged myself inside the police station vestibule.
The policeman groaned and asked me: Who’s the son of a bitch that did this to you?
My father arrived, his face the color of an unripe mango, neither green nor yellow. My brother joined us. In the police station, they all wanted to take the frying pan out of my hand. The policeman, my father, my brother. But I didn’t let them, I held onto it tight. I know I looked crazy, I saw how they all looked at me when I grabbed a glass of water with my left hand and drank it without letting go of the frying pan.
Things happen, in the night stained with light. I felt his hands around my neck, strangling me. It was a brief, strange moment, in the moonlight stealing in from the open window. The child had sneaked early in the night to sleep between us, that hot night in August. Desire was hovering above us like a hungry bird. Desire was like a necessity, like a need that we had to satisfy: like for food, water and sleep. In the beginning I used the presence of the child between us in the bed as an excuse. I wondered to myself whether I really wanted that. I tried to avoid the matter entirely by using the child as an excuse. But he carried him gently making sure not to wake him up and put him in his bed in the next room. The bed is ours, he whispered with a hoarse voice. “But I don’t feel right, he might wake up at any moment.” He didn’t answer me. He barely kissed me when he lifted my dress touching the dew of my sweaty legs. I didn’t close my eyes as I usually do, but I looked at him instead. I wasn’t able to see the expression on his face. I realized that I didn’t want to satisfy the desire of the blind bird. I didn’t want this anymore. In the beginning I hesitated but when he succeeded in unzipping my dress I pushed him and said “no.” He got close to me but I pushed him and stood; I backed up until I felt the cool of the wall against my back.
“No—no, I don’t want you,” I said. The “no” came out shakily so I said again in a confident voice, “I don’t want you.” I felt his hand pressing more around my neck and I could hardly breathe. It occurred to me to knee him between his legs.
Things happen, in the night stained with light. Today I am free. I left him the child and I left. I am free of the darkness of pain, of the hammer of pain, of the frying pan.
But still I remember my swollen head and the blue bruises on my body. I remember the dented frying pan.
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