Our sands
With bone worn backs we huddle
in the shadow of empire, nursing
unborn stars, to beg the question:
how many dawns remain? Against
vain attempts to tame the hungers
of that constant, mechanical mouth,
its gaping hole the void in the centers
where we once met beneath another
sun, in another time, before time was
eaten too, to be excreted in legions
of micro units, meted out in
increments
of perceived
worth.
Set alight
The moment in flux––all danger, possibility. Turbulence of arrival within the dream where each other is the heart of each I, drumming.
Call and response
And since it was no good sitting like that, choking in the sweltering attempt at stillness, the youngest among us started crying and the rest joined in. It was wondrous! Lamentations get short shrift in a culture of bucking up and keeping calm but look where that’s got us. We wept until we exploded with laughter and then we wept some more until we were singing. No one had the notes or the words and no one could remember them later. But in that moment, we all knew––by heart, as the saying goes, without faltering. The wingbeat of that hour dawned an owl in the heart of us, to call who? Who? and howl, and the only way to keep on listening was to call back, and we did.
What we meant.
To loop a single song
until the pattern breaks
to echo ever after.
Against the machine.
When the horror of a moment renders a body speechless, the acts of pen to page, brush to canvas, fingers to keys––become negotiations with death. Yours, mine: what are they and how do they relate? To account for whole cities of dead, a vast underground rendered invisible through banality. What is it to write a voice, paint a vision––while standing on ground in full recognition of the brothers beneath it, and the invisible sisters with their children and parents in mass graves? Welcome to the necropolis, says one, where screens herald the battalion.
What are the stakes at this scale? Life. Lives. Forget numbers, abstractions. Try instead: One.
One.
One.
One.
Each a brother, sister, mother, daughter, each with a scent of their own, a particular laugh and secret hopes––erased.
What is at stake? The human condition in the age of the war machine.
How to resist? The first act is naming.
***
Inspired by the work of Juan Ruflo, Christina Rivera Garza, and Achille Mbembe.
