#saudadechat

by Laura Lamb Brown-Lavoie

To be honest, I told Titanic, My honey’s leaving town soon and I’m afraid it’s gonna wreck me, so I dove down here.

Well come on in, Titanic said, but I’m not sure I’ve got what you’re looking for.

So in I climbed, through a window between two rust stalactites, and began to pace her great promenade. (Which should have been awesome, by the way—walking by the ghosts of all those waving handkerchiefs—except that I was in that feeling-feeling-sorry for-yourself state where every hallway is the hallway of your own wretched mind, every ghost your own ghost, so I didn’t take a good look around.)

When I got to the Turkish baths, I sat on the edge of a barnacled tub and watched weird crabs scrabble at my feet.

I was hoping you’d teach me how to sink, I said. You who have spent a century underwater with 1500 skeletons in your chest.

I don’t know, said Titanic, I’m kind-of a wreck.

Exactly! I said, Me, too! I’m here to apprentice myself to wreckage. I’m here to apprentice myself to you! Great bearded lady, gargantuan ark, you floating hotel. With enough ballrooms in you to dance with everyone I’ve ever loved.

My heart has an iceberg with its name on it, I told Titanic, so I need your advice. Tell me, did you see the iceberg coming?

I did, Titanic said.

And you sailed right into it?

It was love, Titanic said.

And the band just kept playing? And the captain stayed at the wheel? What did it feel like to swallow seawater? Tell me, Titanic, how did it feel?

It felt like a hole in my side and then it felt like plummeting face first into the ice-cold ocean.

She’s a straight talker, the Titanic.

by Fatimah Asghar

you're kashmiri until they burn your home. take your orchards. stake a different flag. until no one remembers the road that brings you back. you're indian until they draw a border through punjab. until the british captains spit paki as they sip your chai, add so much foam you can't taste home. you're seraiki until your mouth fills with english. you're pakistani until your classmates ask what that is. then you're indian again. or some kind of spanish. you speak a language until you don't. until you only recognize it between your auntie's lips. your father was fluent in four languages. you're illiterate in the tongues of your father. your grandfather wrote persian poetry on glasses. maybe. you can't remember. you made it up. someone lied. you're a daughter until they bury your mother. until you're not invited to your father's funeral. you're a virgin until you get too drunk. you're muslim until you're not a virgin. you're pakistani until they start throwing acid. you're muslim until it's too dangerous. you're safe until you're alone. you're american until the towers fall. until there's a border on your back.

by Joy Kogawa

I remember my father telling Tim and me About the mountains and the train And the excitement of going on a trip. What do I remember of the evacuation? I remember my mother wrapping A blanket around me and my Pretending to fall asleep so she would be happy Although I was so excited I couldn't sleep (I hear there were people herded Into the Hastings Park like cattle. Families were made to move in two hours Abandoning everything, leaving pets And possessions at gun point. I hear families were broken up Men were forced to work. I heard It whispered late at night That there was suffering) and I missed my dolls. What do I remember of the evacuation? I remember Miss Foster and Miss Tucker Who still live in Vancouver And who did what they could And loved the children and who gave me A puzzle to play with on the train. And I remember the mountains and I was Six years old and I swear I saw a giant Gulliver of Gulliver's Travels scanning the horizon And when I told my mother she believed it too And I remember how careful my parents were Not to bruise us with bitterness And I remember the puzzle of Lorraine Life Who said "Don't insult me" when I Proudly wrote my name in Japanese And Tim flew the Union Jack When the war was over but Lorraine And her friends spat on us anyway and I prayed to the God who loves All the children in his sight That I might be white.

by Sarah Kay

I will wake you up early even though I know you like to stay through the credits. I will leave pennies in your pockets, postage stamps of superheros in between the pages of your books, sugar packets on your kitchen counter. I will Hansel and Gretel you home. I talk through movies. Even ones I have never seen before. I will love you with too many commas, but never any asterisks. There will be more sweat than you are used to. More skin. More words than are necessary. My hair in the shower drain, my smell on your sweaters, bobby pins all over the window sills. I make the best sandwiches you’ve ever tasted. You’ll be in charge of napkins. I can’t do a pull-up. But I’m great at excuses. I count broken umbrellas after every thunderstorm, and I fall asleep repeating the words thank you. I will wake you up early with my heavy heartbeat. You will say, Can’t we just sleep in, and I will say, No, trust me. You don’t want to miss a thing.

by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Flour on the floor makes my sandals slip and I tumble into your arms. Too hot to bake this morning but blueberries begged me to fold them into moist muffins. Sticks of rhubarb plotted a whole pie. The windows are blown open and a thickfruit tang sneaks through the wire screen and into the home of the scowly lady who lives next door. Yesterday, a man in the city was rescued from his apartment which was filled with a thousand rats. Something about being angry because his pet python refused to eat. He let the bloom of fur rise, rise over the little gnarly blue rug, over the coffee table, the kitchen countertops and pip through each cabinet, snip at the stumpy bags of sugar, the cylinders of salt. Our kitchen is a riot of pots, wooden spoons, melted butter. So be it. Maybe all this baking will quiet the angry voices next door, if only for a brief whiff. I want our summers to always be like this—a kitchen wrecked with love, a table overflowing with baked goods warming the already warm air. After all the pots are stacked, the goodies cooled, and all the counters wiped clean—let us never be rescued from this mess.

by Emmanuel Ortiz

Before I begin this poem, I’d like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001.

I would also like to ask you to offer up a moment of silence for all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, for the victims in Afghanistan, Iraq, in the U.S., and throughout the world.

And if I could just add one more thing…

A full day of silence … for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation.

Six months of silence … for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result

of a 12-year U.S. embargo against the country.

… And now, the drums of war beat again.

Before I begin this poem, two months of silence… for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, where “homeland security” made them aliens in their own country.

Nine months of silence … for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin, and the survivors went on as if alive.

A year of silence … for the millions of dead in Viet Nam -- a people, not a war -- for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives bones buried in it, their babies born of it.

Two months of silence … for the decades of dead in Colombia, whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem, Seven days of silence… for El Salvador A day of silence… for Nicaragua Five days of silence… for the Guatemaltecos None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years. 45 seconds of silence… for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas… 1,933 miles of silence… for every desperate body That burns in the desert sun Drowned in swollen rivers at the pearly gates to the Empire’s underbelly, A gaping wound sutured shut by razor wire and corrugated steel.

25 years of silence… for the millions of Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky. For those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees In the south … the north … the east … the west … There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.

100 years of silence … for the hundreds of millions of indigenous people From this half of right here, Whose land and lives were stolen, In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness …

From somewhere within the pillars of power You open your mouths to invoke a moment of our silence And we are all left speechless, Our tongues snatched from our mouths, Our eyes stapled shut.

A moment of silence, And the poets are laid to rest, The drums disintegrate into dust.

Before I begin this poem, You want a moment of silence… You mourn now as if the world will never be the same And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be. Not like it always has been.

… Because this is not a 9-1-1 poem This is a 9/10 poem, It is a 9/9 poem, A 9/8 poem, A 9/7 poem… This is a 1492 poem. This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.

And if this is a 9/11 poem, then This is a September 11th 1973 poem for Chile. This is a September 12th 1977 poem for Steven Biko in South Africa. This is a September 13th 1971 poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York. This is a September 14th 1992 poem for the people of Somalia. This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground amidst the ashes of amnesia.

This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told, The 110 stories that history uprooted from its textbooks The 110 stories that that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored. This is a poem for interrupting this program.

This is not a peace poem, Not a poem for forgiveness. This is a justice poem, A poem for never forgetting. This is a poem to remind us That all that glitters Might just be broken glass.

And still you want a moment of silence for the dead? We could give you lifetimes of empty: The unmarked graves, The lost languages, The uprooted trees and histories, The dead stares on the faces of nameless children…\

Before I start this poem we could be silent forever Or just long enough to hunger, For the dust to bury us And you would still ask us For more of our silence. So if you want a moment of silence

Then stop the oil pumps Turn off the engines, the televisions Sink the cruise ships Crash the stock markets Unplug the marquee lights Delete the e-mails and instant messages Derail the trains, ground the planes. If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell And pay the workers for wages lost. Tear down the liquor stores, The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the Penthouses and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence, Then take it On Super Bowl Sunday, The Fourth of July, During Dayton’s 13 hour sale, The next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful brown people have gathered. You want a moment of silence Then take it Now, Before this poem begins. Here, in the echo of my voice, In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand, In the space between bodies in embrace, Here is your silence. Take it. Take it all. But don’t cut in line. Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime.

And we, Tonight, We will keep right on singing For our dead.

by Sarah Kay

a man plows his truck through the crowd celebrating on the Nice boardwalk where my once-love once insisted we could make it all the way through a triple-layer chocolate mousse until we were both so full we could not even bear to lick our spoons I text a friend where are you which is code for please tell me these new deaths are not yours this time if I scroll up I will see the same text she sent me in January when I was in lockdown in Jakarta as the man in the starbucks across town pulled the pin from his grenade not yours this time is a song that plays so often I cannot help but know the words are you ok is the hook are you ok is code for we are not ok but please remind me you are breathing back home the Black men and women I love look into mirrors and wonder if they are loose teeth in the mouth of an impatient god are you ok I text impotent please remind me you are breathing I am scared is not a good enough reason to not get out of bed The world is falling apart is not a good enough one either I ask my mother if growing older means one wound piled upon another until we are just a collection of hurt and she insists no— sometimes somebody gets married or has a baby

by Katie Ford, If You Have to Go

I am content because before me looms the hope of love. I do not have it; I do not yet have it.

It is a bird strong enough to lead me by the rope it bites; unless I pull, it is strong enough for me.

I do worry the end of my days might come and I will not yet have it. But even then I will be brave

upon my deathbed, and why shouldn't I be? I held things here, and I felt them.

And to all I felt I will whisper hosanna for goodbye. It is sweet to think of myself, alone at that very moment,

able to say such a thing to all that was my life,