Amal El-Mohtar, ''Pieces'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Pieces

"Listen to the shooting," he said. "Can you hear it? It's hammering on us like rain."
— Omar, a protestor in Homs.

The world is wrong and I am wrung,
a bell of cloth dripping salt
into an earth too broken for roots.
I am a jumble, I am a heap,
a tangle of wires crosspurposed
and my voice is glass
and my voice is in the earth
and the rain is made of metal and mortar
and fire scorns water thin as air and the heat
melts skin. The world is wrong
and I am stung, I am raw to this wasp-air's buzz
to these teeth stacked like walls
against words, against tongues,
and I would tell these sons of men
something so shiningsharp that they would sing with it
hold the sun in a cup of their hands
but this glass voice breaks in my throat
and I would speak swallows with clear wings
to scrape an augury against the sky in splinters
but no one speaks glass.

My grandmother is a country I would know
It is her name, her voice I hear
when I read this gold-cloth word
this sand-gold word, this sun-bright word
with its vowels askew in my alphabet,
this word of riches and gates, of grapes and roads,
of layers and music and dust. It is my grandmother's name
I hear breaking beneath numbers
beneath 200
beneath rain that heaves through bodies like grief
beneath forty-eight
and nineteen, and eighteen.

I will not speak of my name.

I will not speak of your countries
of this language we share
that is not glass. I will not speak
of your smoke
and your silence
and the bullets stitching purpose to our backs.

My voice is in pieces
I cannot swallow.
But if you would hear it
I will put a sliver in your eye
slide it stinging into place.
It is glass. See through it.
Change.

by Amal El-Mohtar

{This poem was originally published in Stone Telling]

Comments

[two-grey-rooms.livejournal.com]

this is an amazing piece.

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

Whoa, I'm not sure I can find a word to describe this, other than "intense" - and that doesn't do it justice.


http://www.amazon.com/Honey-Month-Amal-El-Mohtar/dp/190788100X/

She's so creative! I'm jealous: I'd never have thought to do anything like that. :P *bookmarks*

Thank you so much for sharing! =D

[tithenai.livejournal.com]

Thank you so very, very much for sharing this poem. I'm Amal. :)

I wonder if I could ask you to include a link in the post to where it was originally published? It came from this issue (http://stonetelling.com/currentissue.html) of Stone Telling (http://stonetelling.com/) where there are many, many more unbelievably wonderful poems. I see the community description says it doesn't want to see advertising, but also wants only to see published poems, so I'd hate to see the venues not getting any credit for having made the work available in the first place!

Also, should anyone be audibly inclined, you can hear me reading the poem (http://stonetelling.com/issue4-jun2011/el-mohtar-pieces.html) at Stone Telling as well. :)

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your fine poem, and for the link to the magazine, which I will include in the original post.

[tithenai.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[teithiwr.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is quite amazing - and yes, very intense.

[elvenpiratelady.livejournal.com]

I cannot get the words out for how I feel about this poem; the most beautiful imagery used to describe such horror and madness and sheer wrongness. This one will stay with me for a while.