Poems

Abstract

Poems1 Khaled Mattawa (bio) INTO THE SEA Barely out of the jetty, the boat riseswith every wave, and in the backtwo or three fall into the sea. At sunset the boat starts to loseair, fills with water, mothersand babies fall into the sea. One side stays afloat. We clingto a rope, water up to our belliesand people fall into the sea. All night we grip and bleed.Rain so cold, waves five stories high.If only I could fall into the sea. Sunrise, a helicopter. I finda red shirt, wave it to them.They watch us fall into the sea. They fling a small inflatable boat.I am too weak to reach it.Others try and fall into the sea. A cargo boat throws a rope,get us on board. Alive at last,and we still fall into the sea. [End Page 437] MALOUK'S ODE2 I tap a few words to her on WhatsApp or Viberto blot out the day. I bring my nose close to the screento smell the photos she sends. Selfies of her by the gas stove, or the baby making a gesture,a smile or a yawn or a cry. Sometimes a videoof an old song. She asks about the sea; it's calm but the traffickers no show. She breaks me,a softness that turns me dusk, I, the poet dissidentwho labored to rephrase the nations' inflamed contract, who roved the bone sculptures made governments,the sanctuaries filled fear-bright eyes,my words now monosyllabic soft as sighs. There was blindness in my game, my epic of home.I hear the smugglers, their pupils shifting as if followinga maddened gull, some bootleg spasm and discharge. A blindness that cannot stop seeing,those eyes will keep shifting like this in their graves.I see my spirit too, a plastic cloud drifting in the breeze. With them is our last chance, for what?From the village drying up to sand, the town without jobs,the hands that never learned to write, the eyes that barely read, the soul hunger stump and trade.Am I writing my poem again?Have I become the exile I so mock and detest? [End Page 438] How to walk this sea?How to not believe that such is possible?Arrived in Kufra, the cramped 4x4s, the Hilux where spent bodies cling to wooden poles,IVECOs, hundred-packed swaying death's wave.Emptied in the camp, divided between sheets of galvanize, the courtyard littered—bottles, clothes, old photographs—like some carnival bacchanal the night before,a town facing massacre just fled. An empty, once-crowded barracoonwhere the signal is one ribbon strong.It is from here that I send her all my love. FUEL BURNS3 Gasoline canisters leakor get knocked over;gasoline mixes with seawater, and when the mixturetouches human skin,skin begins to burn. Women sitting in the bottomor the center of the boat [End Page 439] are at highest risk.Dinghies are fittedwith plywood floorsfixed with nails and screws that puncture people's feet.The wood soaks up water,expands, and then splits. Women and children oftenfall through the flooror are trampled and drown. People fight on the boat,the bodies of survivorsand the dead are full of scratches, bite marks,cuts and bruises but it'sfuel burns that horrify most. Survivors arrivehypothermic, dehydrated,barely conscious. They must showerwith soap to get relief,and need help stripping off their fuel-soaked clothes, butjust touching their clothingcan make latex gloves melt. [End Page 440] QASSIDA TO THE STATUE OF SAPPHO IN MYTILINI Kyria, why do you stand askance, facing neither sea nor mountain,not even toward your wild flower fields? And the lyre on your shoulder was it meant to be the sizeof the plastic jugs shouldered by Moria's refugees? I saw them in Sicily too, home of your exile, where no rescuecould pause time's grating at their memories. Your island is empty of poets, Kyria. I came to meet them,to recall the trembling earth under my...