I want to say something smart, something that makes sense, something illuminating about this book. But my mind is so fractured these days and all I can think to properly say is every page of this book somehow brought me closer to myself, to the pressure points I didn’t know I still had, to the depths of who trauma has formed me into. Tarfia Faizullah writes “When I say love / I mean / each artery of this ink” which made me rethink what my intentions were for this blog. So, I’m gonna make this post a little different from normal and write a response to one of Faizullah’s poems, “Apology From a Muslim Orphan.” Hope you enjoy.
Apology From a Muslim Orphan
I know you know
how to shame into obedience
the long chain tethering lawnmower
to fence. And in your garden
are no chrysanthemums, no hem
of lace from the headscarf
I loose for him at my choosing.
Around my throat still twines a thin line
from when, in another life, I was
guillotined. I know you know
how to slap a child across the face
with a sandal.
Forgive me. I love when he tells me to be
the water you siphon into the roots
of your trees. In that life,
I was your enemy and silverleaf.
In this one, the child you struck was me.
Untitled
by Rai
You to write me
as though I am your confessor
sins splayed out, eloquence abundant
language lavish and liminal.
You seek absolution for trespasses against me
but I am no God, I cannot restore your soul,
breathe a life back inside it, no CPR could
save you from the beetles in your throat
gnawing their way out.
In the before sun swam atop my cheekbones
tickled whispers down the side of my neck and
now you’ve become
sun’s blockage nasty eclipse.
I wander in the deepest blueblack, day after
night after day
praying for reincarnation.
I think it makes sense to respond with poetry. As I read your poem, I am struck by the "you" and its desire for absolution, for forgiveness, by the insidious nature of wrongdoing. Beetles crawl out of the you's throat as if the body is dead, wrecked by something huge.
ReplyDeleteI notice in your poem that the speaker feels the warmth of the sun, elemental joy on their cheeks. This suggests that the "before" was when the speaker was young, desire pre-formed. This joy is wrenched away and blocked by the "you", "day after /night after day".
This is stunning and I am grateful you chose to respond this way. Thank you ~~ hj
I also struggled to find words to respond to Faizullah’s poems that were formal and linear. You address the death found everywhere in this collection with "the beetles in your throat/gnawing their way out." Is it a reference to the lords prayer when you write of absolution for "trespasses against me"? you get at the unforgivable nature in Faizullah’s poem for the subject who beats children, how this kind of abuse shadows throughout life, eclipsing the sun.
ReplyDeleteThank you Rai. This is beautiful.
Rai this response poem resonated with me so much!
ReplyDeleteI loved your attention to the way the l words sounds with each other, each taking up its own space in your poem "language" "lavish" "liminal"
I also loved the ending, there was a magic there, similar to the magic I felt in Faizullah's book. A praying for reincarnation, an acknowledgment of reincarnation and past lives and how past lives, so traumatic, can still be found in current iterations. But only in the smallest of ways that can be felt in these large spaces.