 |
| västra Beirut |
***
Hala Alyan är en prisbelönt palestinsk-amerikansk poet och klinisk psykolog vars arbete har publicerats i ett flertal tidskrifter, inklusive Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner och Colorado Review. Hon bor i Manhattan. Källs: Författarens hemsida
*
New Year, by Hala Alyan
(From Hijra. Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, 2016.)
I want the vandalized night, rock water
from a cavern, my eyes copper coins
strewn at the bottom of the gypsy
fountain. Owls fleck the air with
bids of love and I am the last
of the daughters, scavenging villages
for the underfed and vicious. My wanting
cleanses me: I’m afraid, a refugee selling
flowers red as a blazing forest calls
me wife. We river onto maps with
shaking hands, skittish, non grata,
as the snow blankets our reckless lives.
***
"In her third poetry collection, Hijra, Hala Alyan creates poems of migration and flight reflecting and bearing witness to the haunting particulars in her transnational journey as well as those of her mother, her aunts, and the female ancestors in Gaza and Syria.
The reader sees war, diaspora, and immigration, and hears the marginalized voices of women of color." Source: Publisher
*
Azra, by Hala Alyan
(From Hijra. Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, 2016.)
There is a tunnel, elsewhere, that I live in.
It is a house full of nails and not one hammer.
By midmorning cicadas narrate testaments.
I name my daughters after the fled villages,
 |
| Akka, Beirut. I början av 1900-talet. |
Akka, Qira. They speak the language of falcons,
lyrics about animal hearts, succulent,
red. They awaken the mice with their dreaming
If there is a husband, he salts the soil.
Nothing is merciful with him, and when he sings
I see twenty women tearing satin dresses,
black finches swarming the coast.
He says I have hands like Baghdad.
I wonder if he means the tending or the torching.
***
Hon är en Lannan Foundation Residency Fellow och hennes senaste samling, Hijra, valdes som vinnare av 2015 års Crab Orchard-series in poetry. Källa: wordswithoutborders.org
 |
| Archaeological Museum of the American University of Beirut |
The letter home, by Hala Alyan
(From Hijra. Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, 2016.)
Tell her of the bronzed children. Your son’s home spinning with laughter, their voices delicious even if you cannot understand the words the youngest uses to describe the waves. At night, they gather around the flame of the television and eat cakes sprinkled with sugar. On the night of the comets, the youngest takes you outside, says follow the tail and the sky bursts violet. His Arabic is rusty and you teach him the word for clementine as you watch the fire above. Tell her of the curtain of bees that covers the largest ash tree in your son’s backyard and how he says his name all wrong in this country, like someone has cleared his mouth of bells. Your mouth is full of bells and no one seems to hear when you ask for rosewater to rinse sinks with. They dance to maracas here and none of the children whimper when thunder comes. Tell her of the other night, when your son took you to the lighthouse and you stood stunned, watching the light dapple the water soft as an unwrinkled green sheet. Tell her you are afraid of the supermarket, the bright displays, the girl that bags your oranges without saying a word. Tell her you miss your city like a lung. You miss the crakes, the fickle sea washing along driftwood, the way even the locusts bring music, tell her you wake at dawn weeping for figs, and when she writes back she will call you a fool, she will say sister, sister, they’ve turned this land into a grave.
Inga kommentarer:
Skicka en kommentar