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PEACE BE UPON US
For the
Palestinian poet, Taha Muhammad Ali
Taha stoops over his poems and moves his
hand
back and forth from his mouth as if to make
a visible path for his words: Hate will be the first thing
to putrefy within us when we die.
I want to hug his shop-keeper fat belly,
kiss the fleshy drupe of his overgrown
ears, say, I am your Jewish daughter.
Please, I want to stop fighting. Plant
a piece of splendor in my heart.
Old man, who as a child fled from your
village
without even a bag of labneh in your pouch.
Old man, who returned to a settlement
without memory of you, your family, the idea
of your youth. Your razed village, the boy who walked
without shoes on bullet casings and copper rings.
Old man, selling carved crosses and camels
to missionaries in a land no longer part yours.
Let us show the world how to crack
fresh almonds and throw their shells into
a pile of forgiving dust. Let me comb
the wisps of your white desert hair.
Remind me again that the land
is a traitor who does not remember love.
But we do.
EMPATHY FOR A HYSTERECTOMY SCAR
My mother lifted her shirt, grabbed
the two soggy sides of her stomach,
pushed them together over the white line
of her cesarean scar, and said,
I swear it hurts.
The scar of a tidal line
on a rocky beach. The scar
of a thousand legs moving
over a branch. The scar of
dried glue raised on red paper.
The scar of a jet stream
traveling down the eastern coast.
Of burdock root stripped of its
tough skin. The scar of division,
the scar of removal, of muscle cut
for a sonšs stuck chin. The scar
for the uterus that had enough
of love. A scar of monument and memory.
To what will heal and will not heal.
What will close up after
the blood, but not disappear.
Can I have value without pain?
Say, I am sorry, without taking on weight.
I touched my flat stomach.
I am the last daughter.
The curl of my one black hair.
The unbroken bread of my skin.
THE BUSH INAUGURATION
The law enforcement presence is expected
to go far beyond
anything Washington has seen for an inauguration.
~ Martin Kettle, The Guardian, January, 13, 2001
We wore raincoats and plastic bags behind
barricades and metal bars.
Soaked children of the rain.
Without access to bathrooms, batteries,
coffee, food.
We smiled even though we felt
as if our wallets were being slipped
from our pockets. Our jewelry snatched
from our necks and wrists.
Our signs read, Sad, sad, sad.
The entourage of black limousines,
American flags jutting from their
grill plates like arrogant tusks.
It could have been a holiday parade.
Children on shoulders waving
to clowns on stilts and fancy cars.
We could have been holding light
in our hands.
The news reported fistfights
in the rain. Arrested for
struggling our handcuffed arms.
There should have been more of us.
The poor men in police uniforms
who pushed us back in the rain.
Our new president moving like
a cancer who thought it owned
the body to begin with. We yelled, No, no, no.
But it had already spread to our lungs.
Corie Feiner (formerly Herman) is a poet, performer, activist, and
educator. She earned her MFA from NYU's Graduate Creative Writing Program,
where she studied with poets, Sharon Olds, Phil Levine, and Agha Shahid
Ali.
She has been a finalist for several awards, including the Randall Jarrell
Prize, and publishes her work in a number of literary magazines, including
Caylx, Kalliope, and Phoebe. Her first collection of poetry was Radishes
Into Roses (Linear Arts Press).
She has performed her work at a number of venues and was the founder of
The Poet's Open at Club 13. Currently, she is writing and performing with
Von Ussar Danceworks and has received rave reviews in The New York Times
and Backstage Magazine for her choreographed poems. |