Coseismic Luminescence

Three poems for the end of the year

I’ve been turning over a blog post in my mind for weeks now, but for some reason I couldn’t write it. So instead I’ll share a few new poems – which of course is NOT what poets are supposed to do; we’re meant to sit on our darlings and share them only with the magazine gods who deign to sprinkle us with approval, or (more likely) polite rejection letters.

But I am inclined to take heed of Kurt Vonnegut’s advice to writers, which is to pour your whole heart and soul into a poem, make it the best piece of writing you’ve ever done, and then scrunch up the paper and throw it in the nearest wastepaper basket. Which is to say, just make your art, and don’t concern yourself with how any industry will take it.

Earthquake light, aka coseismic luminescence: unexplained lights that appear during earthquakes, such as those reported at the October earthquake near Marrakesh. Image by Kuribayashi, Mount Kimyo, Japan, 1968

Coseismic Luminescence

After Joy Harjo: “Every poem is an effort at ceremony”

It slithers over the skin,their hatred. Down the nape.Poisonous irritant a thousandclinical studies have named stillspiking drinks: taste of iron on the teeth.A scalpel tip traces the shape of us from the map:one deft move and we’ll float away, red vinyl fishcurling in the heat of a palm.

I place Somali resins on coalscarry cleansing smoke through musty hallswhere parasitic cartographers cringe. The smokeis filled with light receptors – like the streakbetween the brain stem and tailbones,theirs and mine, like the dentrites flitteringas a swarm of fireflies, shrieking inside them,despite them, for purification.

This is not the sudden hiccup of Earththat swallows schools whole, gravitational yawnthat sends women screaming into folds ofyellow mountain skirts. A blankly assessing facepeers through the rippling surface at us, submerged.

I send this poem as a thread to catch the unwholedpieces, those who have to prove they belongin homes of denial and I send this poem as aholocaust cloak that burns only on the outsideand within is a cavern of coolness and I send this poemas a prayer in the shape of an origami crane that really fliesin a sphere of silence not of blown eardrums butthe delayed inhalation of the drowning

Intention can be folded to fit any pocketbecause the first way into humanity is tobe happy for another and if you unfold the craneit spills seed-blessings on yourfissured earthen face

And I send this poemto the playing card towers of enmityas an exhalation forevery one who dares notbreathe

The Unyeared

31.12.2023

This has been a Grenfell year
a George Floyd year
a Srebrenica year
a boil-the-world-alive year
til the protective crust of
carelessness liquifies:
step gingerly to keep your feet
from leadening again.

I give thanks for this search & rescue year
that quarried my heart from its block of marble
in this grey dust smothering the child’s face year
a cauldron was kindled in the hearth
of this year that never moves far or near
into which any icicle or knife can be thrown
and I will swallow it, let the heat melt all.

In the belly of this year ears prick up
fronds along the forest paths of the
beginningless-endless year
in the alveoli of the year there are
bubbles of oxygen, trapped, nesting.

In a cry of rage year of
five hundred years of children
thieved from mothers
years sucked out of their mouths. This
kiss of life year, a now-do-you-see year.
A we can never close our eyes again for all
the years that remain to us.

Yes
we attest to the year-old child whose limbs
were halved before she could walk,
the unyeared youth starved in a cell, yes to the
raw edges of this howl of love year – may this be
the year that eyelids sting at comfort
and hands are messages of solidarity.

Palindrome Poem for Gaza

Solidarity is solidity-with
is an exposed membrane, thickened in layers
is an expanded proprioception of arms and shoulders
in soul’s vicinity, a sound produced in multiple bodies
a colony of soft corals, is a room breath-warm
saffron bun clutched in hand
cheeks silver as an Irish whistle. It grows like a
cedar forest, mulberry grove
in this body of bark and inflammable sap
I know solidity to be muscular and fibrous
arching in gales, gripping root-feet
mossy and damp with night dew
candelabra arms
a habitat for every one

A habitat for every one
candelabra arms
mossy and damp with night dew
arching in gales, gripping root-feet
I know solidity to be muscular and fibrous
in this body of bark and inflammable sap
cedar forest, mulberry grove
cheeks silver as an Irish whistle. It grows like a
saffron bun clutched in a hand
a colony of soft corals is a room breath-warm
in soul’s vicinity, a sound produced in multiple bodies
is an expanded proprioception of arms and shoulders
is an exposed membrane, thickened in layers
solidarity is solidity with


Praying that 2024 brings the fulfilment of this wave of awakening to imperialism, colonisation, and racist ideology, and brings about a genuine movement of justice and leaving people to bloody well live in their own lands peacefully. I’m hopeful. I don’t know why as there’s little (it seems) to be hopeful for, but there’s a burning in the heart now that won’t be unkindled, and it’s in the young people who will inherit this damaged earth, so inshallah khayr. (And please forgive us for not being able to undo the boomers’ excesses!)

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Fi amanillah!