Ghost Voices

Exit

by Rasaq Malik

i.
On every door in this village
there are last notes left by families
crossing the sea to another land.
There are promises written in blood,
wishes stamped on the doors by those
whose names are unwritten in the book
of remembrance. In every room that
remains there is the smell of loss.
There is an emptiness that not even
time can fill, the way a woman fills
a watering can this morning with
water before heading to her garden.
There is a dead clock on each wall,
an expired calendar detailing the
dates of massacres in this land where
graves outnumber those who remain,
where trees bear the names of those
buried in a mass grave.

ii.
There is no lush field where flowers
can grow. Each flower that remains
is withering like the hope of those
who crave to return to their rooms
after the blasts, after each day of
explosions that render the village
unlivable. There are no children in
the streets to throw balloons into
the air because the streets are
marked as death zones, as places
where bodies are buried on nights
of sieges. Outside a house, there is
a grave of a woman who used to
attend a masjid before the masjid
was lowered to the ground by
insurgents. Somewhere there are
shoes of dead children abandoned
by their parents, boxes of books
left by fleeing loved ones.
There are no trees to shade them,
no one to wake the dead because
the dead are dead, buried in places
where there are no flowers
to adorn them.

iii.
Where will the light of morning
emerge from in this land where
the darkness of grief reflects
everywhere? Who will resurrect
the fallen dreams of those who
have crossed borders, leaving
behind their lives in this phantom
land? Sometimes at dusk, the dead
return as shadows, as trees that are
starved of rain.

iv.
There is no rain. Nothing
sprouts on this land except
the bones of those they have buried.
On every wall, there are
photographs of those who will never
return to see what remains of their
native lands, those who will,
like Darwish, be buried in a place
far from homeland

Citizenship

by Kazim Ali

If it isn’t where you enter but where you exit
Who doesn’t try to grab and devour what one loves
That last piece of the jigsaw puzzle fitting in
A ghost is not one who cannot let go but one who we cannot let go of
Streets wet with asters and deletion
June dissuaded by grey
My citizenship card found
Now I am neither one thing nor another

I know the truth

by Marina Tsvetaeva

I know the truth! Enough of the old truth–out!
No need people, with so many people on earth, to struggle.
It is evening–see–it is nearly night.
What speaks to you–poets, lovers, generals?

The wind bows low, the earth bathes in dew
and soon sky, starry blizzard will rest.
And under soil, soon sleep, we all will,
who never, on earth, let each other sleep.

Translated from the Russian by Lisa Wujnovich

The Wedding

by Nin Andrews

Whoever told you the dead aren’t good lovers
never met my husband. He came home from the war
in a body bag, the flag tucked in his corpse,
but when he heard my voice, he stepped out
of the coffin, swung it lightly aside.
That’s something every soldier knows
how to do. They can do it in their sleep.
They die and come back to life just to kiss the bride.
After the wedding, we were too drunk to drive home.
Everyone had left the cemetery. So we lay back
against the headstone, said our eulogies aloud,
told the moon and the stars about the life we’d leave behind.

[someone stands between you and death-but]

by Halyna Kruk

someone stands between you and death — but
who knows how much more my heart can stand —
where you are, it’s so important
someone prays for you
even with their own words
even if they don’t clasp their hands and kneel

plucking the stems off strawberries from the garden
I recall how I scolded you when you were small
for squashing the berries before they ripened

my heart whispers: Death, he hasn’t ripened yet
he’s still green, nothing in his life has been
sweeter than unwashed strawberries
I beg you: oh God, don’t place him at the front,
please don’t rain rockets down on him, oh God,
I don’t even know what a rocket looks like,
my son, I can’t picture the war even to myself

Translated from the Ukrainian by Sibelan Forrester

It Was the Coffee in the Mornings

by Allen Shadow

It was the coffee in the mornings
with the one poached egg on rye
the smell somehow staying with me

well beyond his walking into the living room naked
and the cops coming to take him away
to that place where lost men yell intermittently

and women bob and cry
and where I came to hold his trembling hand
as he slumped over drooling

and my sobbing at the caving
of the man who once held up the world