Elizabeth Alexander has the genius line, "many things are true at once" which is something that good poems are capable of rendering. I'm so interested in what is emotionally true versus the idea (and violence) of 'factual truth.' There's so much left out of the historical record, so many materials excluded from our personal and collective archives and I believe that if we could hold this knowledge—that so much is true simultaneously, multi-directionally—if we could honor the ways that we are deeply entangled with one another, we might learn better care for each other and our shared world. Poems help us remember that we can't have too many stories and that we need all of the stories, all of the many true things!
Janan Alexandra is a Lebanese-American poet and MFA candidate at Indiana University. She has received fellowships from the Martha's Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets. You can find her work in Ploughshares, The Rumpus, Mizna, and elsewhere."
Welcome to the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Janan, what poems have you brought for us today?
This is a poem in seven parts. It's called "return."
1
we are whirling
through Beirut
the city i visit most
often in my sleep
i take this to mean
i am making
my best effort
to dream in Arabic
where the air is rich
in orange
flowers & rhyme
& we draw
back our lips
to speak
2
in the so-called city
that never sleeps
i tight rope along
the edge of cobble-
stones bathed in light
& last week's trash
i dream by nose
the heavy stench
of garbage rotting
into the sweet
fresh ka'ak
golden purses
who ride the air
like wooden boats
in my ear a moped
twists & guzzles
the pitted road
spitting gravel under
the too slow heel
of somebody's foot
3
somebody's foot grazes
mine & i find a boy there
gazing in at me through
the small eyehole of my sleep
i have forgotten his name
until my mother reminds me
It's Hani there in a teal t-shirt
black irises flowering from his eyes
*
one summer afternoon
with Hani we swam & played
licking ice pops sticky lipped
on the stone apartment steps
our knees slapping open
to greet the turquoise sea
we floated weightless
our bodies fanning starfish
*
later that day i received my first
lecture on the dangers of touch
& electricity in Beirut prompted
by my smiling disobedience:
i swung open the refrigerator door
to a sudden shock of light jolting
my arm from inside a blade
zigzagging hot through my bones
4
when asked about his time
in Beirut, Mahmoud Darwish said:
"Poetry requires a stable temperature, around twenty degrees Celsius!
Ice and very hot weather kill poetry, and Beirut was boiling.
Boiling with feelings and visions. Beirut was a land of perplexity."
5
dear land of perplexity
i think i understand
what the Poet means
everyone always clicks
their teeth soberly & says
the situation is very bad
& in the same breath
a phoenix flashes
its firebird wings
lifting once more
very bad or not
loving to love to live
6
dear secret stairways
painted brightly sing song
greetings i know & do not know
dear orange juice held
in squat paper pouches
sleeves of Nescafé
dear mushroom shop
candy stall your lengths
& ribbons of sweets
unrolling like the tongue's
lottery tickets dotted
with pink & blue treats
i sling my arm around
your balconies at night
catch myself falling
through the house
with windows blown
out face agape
7
as the story goes
we once lived
in a beige house:
two parents
two sisters
one black cat
two turtles
who left
& never
came back.
You've been listening to the poetry of Janan Alexandra on the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.