"When you open my ear,
touch it gently.
My mother’s voice lingers somewhere inside.
Her voice is the echo that helps recover my equilibrium
when I feel dizzy during my attentiveness.
You may encounter songs in Arabic,
poems in English I recite to myself,
or a song I chant to the chirping birds in our backyard.
When you stitch the cut, don’t forget to put all these back in my ear.
Put them back in order as you would do with books on your shelf.” |
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Dear Human:
Early summer days. Sunshine, quick rain storms. Sit with the dying; their families. Hands in dirt, sun on skin. Plant seeds: Baby's Breath, Sunflowers, Straw flower. Transplant Sweet William. Tomorrow, hopefully: marigolds. Watch kale, calendula, sage, beans and tomatoes become themselves. Slow pace to match Win-dog, as he slows his. Cut roses from the garden, place one in each room. Lean into longer conversations, wind all the way home. Fill pages with ink; soaked in grief, we are. Me, I am surprised by joy. Hummingbird visits, bunnies greet us in the stretch of evening light. Two hearts tilt the same direction. Season shifts, sediment rises. The water is rarely still. More or less could be found here, in the good light, if one were searching for something to hold onto, to keep going with, just as this missive took her time to find your eyes. Crafted in May, it took all the way until the end of June——almost July!——for the words to make their way to the surface, to find their way from heart through hands. Things take the time they take, and more so now, (and now, and now).
Before we get there, to the next part (which is another here), a reminder for anyone and all: the hustle is so deeply embedded in our collective nervous system that much like writing, rest takes practice. I invite you to spend time in the coming days-weeks-months resting in as many curious and inventive ways as possible, without making it something to achieve. Our structure and instructions are borrowed from  Entering Hibernation (a zine from For the Wild) and, as a bundle of poems serve as our reading material, I've altered the intro to reflect just that, ya dig?
As you take in these poems, I invite you to use this practice as an opportunity for rest, as a precursor for sleep, dreams, hibernations, park hangs with best mates and hammock breezes. Read what follows out of order, one word at a time, one line here, one line there. Read it in a way that brings ease: in a way that works for you.
PREPARE YOUR SPACE FOR REST
What do you need to be comfortable?
Bring your tea, blankets, loved ones, journals, and more.
Know, though, that all you need for rest is the safety and security of your own body.
WRITE
As you prepare to read, write down the feelings and thoughts that buzz through your head. Allow yourself to set the busyness aside for a moment. Perhaps you physically place the list away from you.
CHECK IN
Close your eyes. Take a moment to check in with your body. How are you feeling? If sleep calls, listen to it.
A PRAYER
Think of those for whom rest is evasive, those who must remain vigilant, those who rest has been sacrificed for others' "prosperity." Offer a prayer for the rest of the world.
CONSIDER
Consider what it means to be awake. What exists in the "in-between" moment of rest and wakefulness?
REST
As you drift off to rest, ease your mind away from the worries of the day. Time is expansive. You will have space for it all.
GRATITUDE
Thank your body for all that it does, for all that it bears, for the space it provides you.
What I Will
BY SUHEIR HAMMADBY
I will not
dance to your war
drum. I will
not lend my soul nor
my bones to your war
drum. I will
not dance to your
beating. I know that beat.
It is lifeless. I know
intimately that skin
you are hitting. It
was alive once
hunted stolen
stretched. I will
not dance to your drummed
up war. I will not pop
spin beak for you. I
will not hate for you or
even hate you. I will
not kill for you. Especially
I will not die
for you. I will not mourn
the dead with murder nor
suicide. I will not side
with you nor dance to bombs
because everyone else is
dancing. Everyone can be
wrong. Life is a right not
collateral or casual. I
will not forget where
I come from. I
will craft my own drum. Gather my beloved
near and our chanting
will be dancing. Our
humming will be drumming. I
will not be played. I
will not lend my name
nor my rhythm to your
beat. I will dance
and resist and dance and
persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than
death. Your war drum ain’t
louder than this breath.
You Came with Shells
BY JUNE JORDAN
You came with shells. And left them:
shells.
They lay beautiful on the table.
Now they lie on my desk
peculiar
extraordinary under 60 watts.
This morning I disturb I destroy the window
(and its light) by moving my feet
in the water. There.
It’s gone.
Last night the moon ranged from the left
to the right side
of the windshield. Only white lines
on a road strike me as
reasonable but
nevertheless and too often
we slow down for the fog.
I was going to say a natural environment
means this or
I was going to say we remain out of our
element or
sometimes you can get away completely
but the shells
will tell about the howling
and the loss Our Father, Big Chief in Heaven
BY SANDRA CISNEROS
Stretch our hearts ample as a yawn,
so we might accommodate the double
wide trailer of our neightbor's grief
and, by comparison, feel
gratitude for our own. When the World as We Knew It Ended
BY JOY HARJO
We were dreaming on an occupied island at the farthest edge
of a trembling nation when it went down.
Two towers rose up from the east island of commerce and touched
the sky. Men walked on the moon. Oil was sucked dry
by two brothers. Then it went down. Swallowed
by a fire dragon, by oil and fear.
Eaten whole.
It was coming.
We had been watching since the eve of the missionaries in their
long and solemn clothes, to see what would happen.
We saw it
from the kitchen window over the sink
as we made coffee, cooked rice and
potatoes, enough for an army.
We saw it all, as we changed diapers and fed
the babies. We saw it,
through the branches
of the knowledgeable tree
through the snags of stars, through
the sun and storms from our knees
as we bathed and washed
the floors.
The conference of the birds warned us, as they flew over
destroyers in the harbor, parked there since the first takeover.
It was by their song and talk we knew when to rise
when to look out the window
to the commotion going on—
the magnetic field thrown off by grief.
We heard it.
The racket in every corner of the world. As
the hunger for war rose up in those who would steal to be president
to be king or emperor, to own the trees, stones, and everything
else that moved about the earth, inside the earth
and above it.
We knew it was coming, tasted the winds who gathered intelligence
from each leaf and flower, from every mountain, sea
and desert, from every prayer and song all over this tiny universe
floating in the skies of infinite
being.
And then it was over, this world we had grown to love
for its sweet grasses, for the many-colored horses
and fishes, for the shimmering possibilities
while dreaming.
But then there were the seeds to plant and the babies
who needed milk and comforting, and someone
picked up a guitar or ukulele from the rubble
and began to sing about the light flutter
the kick beneath the skin of the earth
we felt there, beneath us
a warm animal
a song being born between the legs of her;
a poem. In all of my dreams,
the words I love you
BY HANIF ABDURRAQIB sound like they are being spoken underwater. the interviewer asks if I have come to any new conclusions about the titanic. I think dying afraid is treason against your lone, cherished life. a disaster of terrible hours masked by occasional miracle. but I am speaking for myself, I say. I want time to fall in love with my endings before I take their hand. a halo of orange stains my cheek. A smattering of lipstick before a door closes & never opens again. I look up & it is dark before I can ask forgiveness for not loving the occasional miracle of light. at the dawn of dying, a man told me it wasn’t the entirety of his living that flashed before him. only the softest, prettiest moment on an endless loop in every dream & he said to wake up from that, each morning, & still be here was another kind of death. the interviewer asks if I know how to swim. I cannot see water from where I l̶o̶v̶e̶ ̶ live, so I don’t believe it can touch me.
the story is there were people aboard the ship who would have survived if they believed the ship was sinking. invincible beings on an invincible vessel. but I ask who is in charge of setting the distance between knowing you will die & not wanting to. from far enough out, it is impossible to tell where the sky ends & the water begins, a child might say, a finger hanging over the sand-struck edge of the world. what strange architecture, the illusion between heavens. darkness mothers darkness which mothers myth. any good executioner knows this. an iceberg finds paradise in the yawning black, its bladed edges looking, perhaps, from afar, like stars strung across another doorway to another unromantic night. the interviewer asks if I know how to swim. I love the thrill of waking from a nightmare, evicted from the hell of my mind’s own making & thrown back, gasping, into a moment of gratitude thin as the thread that barricades the door between love and anguish. a half-minute to praise the hauntings, the illusions that would rather me dead. but would you believe the bed is still empty, despite the good news. I apologize to the absence until I envy my dead pal, who died a new death each morning when he was torn from his long-gone beloved. who, in his dream, danced with him in their first house & sung darling, you send me / I know you send me into his ear & I haven’t loved anyone enough to want to run, screaming their name through God’s hallways. I haven’t loved anyone who visits me while I sleep & die & die again. the interviewer has my hand in their hand now & they ask me if I’d like to learn. they tell me it’s only as cold as I imagine it to be. I’m sorry. I am always doing this. we began somewhere else. I know we are here to talk about drowning, but what if we never find each other in the afterlife. if we arrive with a memory of love, a sweetness that took its leave upon our earthly exit. what if even in heaven, we are meant to wander, lonely as an iceberg floating between a lie & the truth. wouldn’t you want to stay a little longer? The child standing on the shoreline understands this. means to say that there is no difference between the suffering. heaven, another kind of drowning. I would be among those who were called disbelievers. I would find a place to watch the sky while the ship curled upwards like a wicked grin. I need a moment to fall in love with my endings. I know, it will be over soon. forgive me for holding on. I am too afraid there is nothing on the other side. God fashions a door & you spend eternity walking through, only to find another door. God invents an echo of longing for all of us in the end. the interviewer asks if I know that the flowers I’ve been holding are dead. When I look down, I wake up. A parade of rose petals spiral from under my tongue, each one covered in ice. Poem of the One World
BY MARY OLIVER
This morning
the beautiful white heron
was floating along above the water
and then into the sky of this
the one world
we all belong to
where everything
sooner or later
is a part of everything else
which thought made me feel
for a little while
quite beautiful myself. Autofiction
BY BILLY-RAY BELCOURT
How we exist in the world
depends on how we describe it.
Have I always been in the world?
No, I've been autumn in the middle of August.
I've been the wind as well as the tamarack tree
second after its final needles drop.
Don't tell anyone, but I'm happiest
when my life feels like autofiction.
In Alberta, the twentieth century never ended.
We are all subjects of the the twentieth century,
I say to a man I just met on the internet.
It sounds like a riddle for which the answer is a body.
Every winter, I take pictures of the snow
because the snow reminds me
of my impermanence. Mostly, I want to be undone
without being ruined. An NDN truth?
The present is as beautiful as it is brutal. |
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With love,
B. |
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