O (Penguin Poets) - Softcover

Hashem Beck, Zeina

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143136895 ISBN 13: 9780143136897

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2022

Synopsis

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2022 BY LIT HUB AND THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY 

“O is so full of music and passion for life . . . Zeina Hashem Beck’s poems unfold the abundance of our world.” —Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic
 
From a “brilliant, absolutely essential voice” whose “poems feel like whole worlds” (Naomi Shihab Nye), a poetry collection considering the body physical, the body politic, and the body sacred

Zeina Hashem Beck writes at the intersection of the divine and the profane, where she crafts elegant, candid poems that simultaneously exude a boundless curiosity and a deep knowingness. Formally electrifying—from lyrics and triptychs to ghazals and Zeina's own duets, in which English and Arabic echo and contradict each other—O explores the limits of language, notions of home and exile, and stirring visions of motherhood, memory, and faith.

About this title

About the Author

Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet and the author of two previous full-length collections of poetry: Louder than Hearts (Bauhan Publishing, 2017) and To Live in Autumn (The Backwaters Press, 2014), as well as two chapbooks: 3arabi Song (Rattle, 2016) and There Was and How Much There Was (smith|doorstop, 2016). Educated in Arabic, English, and French, Zeina has a BA and an MA in English Literature from the American University of Beirut. Her poem “Maqam” won Poetry’s 2017 Frederick Bock Prize, and her work appeared in The New York Times, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere. Zeina is the co-creator and co-host, with poet Farah Chamma, of Maqsouda, a podcast about Arabic poetry produced by Sowt. After a lifetime in Lebanon and a decade in Dubai, Zeina recently moved to California with her husband and two daughters.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

There, There, Grieving

Where are you from?

               There.

Where are you headed?

               There.

What are you doing?

               Grieving.

-Rabia al-Adawiyya

Little brother, we are all grieving

& galaxy & goodbye. Once, I climbed inside

the old clock tower of my hometown

& found a dead bird, bathed in broken light,

like a little christ.

Little christ of our hearts, I know

planets light years away

lie under our tongues. We've tasted them.

We've climbed staircases saying, There, there.

Little brother, we are all praying. Every morning,

I read out loud but not loud enough

to alarm anyone. Once, my love said, Please

open the door. I can hear you talk. Open the door.

Little christ of our hearts, tell anyone

you've been talking to god & see

what happens. Every day,

I open the door. I do it by looking

at my daughter on a swing-

eyes closed & crinkled, teeth bared.

I say, Good morning good morning you

little beating thing.

Little brother, we are all humming.

More & more, as I read, I sound

like my father with his book of prayers,

turning pages in his bed-a hymn

for each day of the week, a gift

from his mother, who taught me

the ten of diamonds is a win, left me

her loose prayer clothes. Bismillah.

Little christ of our hearts, forgive me,

for I loved eating the birds with lemon,

& the sound of their tiny bones. But I couldn't

stomach the eyes of the fried fish.

Little brother, we are always hungry.

Here, this watermelon. Here, some salt

for the tomatoes. Here, this song

for the dead birds in time boxes,

& the living. That day in the clock tower,

I saw the city too, below-

               the merchants who call, the blue awnings,

               the corn carts, the clotheslines, the heat,

               the gears that turn, & the remembering.

ode to the afternoon

my friend tells me she's been running

in the cemetery in the afternoon

she calls it just-a-garden-really

first i am afraid & then i am afraid

everything is cemetery & garden

my late uncle's flower shop

my daughter learning to fold a paper into a boat

sea salt marriage dawn old french music

this vertical line digging deeper

into my forehead each morning

that bicycle in the city tied to a street post

with flowers & a note to the girl who rode it

when i was a little girl i wanted to bury the afternoon

when longing was long & my parents slept & slept

i stood in the corridor & repeated i i i i i until i

flickered in & out of myself some days i even

threatened to fling my body from the balcony until

my brother with such calm looked at me

dangling from the railing my head thrown backward

& explained you don't own your soul

it belongs to God only He can decide

i stood in the corridor i stood on the balcony

i stood in the desolate afternoon & repeated

because what is repetition

if not a question the way mom every day

with her hair dryer with her grocery list

with her buying this shawl & that

is asking what have i done what have i done

the book says we will see clearly

when the drunkenness of death descends

my uncle saw a man & a woman

standing by his hospital window

& asked his wife who they were

my father with his prayer beads

with his cigarette gestured to the driver

taking my uncle to his grave

to circle back & pass

by his flower shop my father

with his few words said

one last time so he

by he my father meant both

his brother & himself

my uncle taught me to sing que sera sera

he said say it what will be will be

i still dread the afternoon & still ask

will i be pretty will i be missed

& i still haven't been

to his grave but have driven

past his flower shop again & again & again

the way on the night he died i drove beneath bridges

& saw him on each one & waved

Ghazal: Hands

Do you pine for photograph-worthy limbs, slender hands?

I asked about the soul & mom said God has tender hands.

I worried I'd need a ladder to climb up to heaven.

Or a strong grip. Or an ancestor to send her hands.

I've watched them shatter window glass. I've watched

them knead flour, water, grief. Render, hands.

Their earthly veneer tells time & the weather. Show us

how love. How green. How remorse. O calendar hands.

What medicine for longing? Salt water lifting

the breathing body. Sun, skin. Scent of lavender. Hands.

The child lets go, charges out to the sea alone. Come

dark, she drifts to her mother's touch, bends her hands.

The mother recites into the child's palm: O bird how

to eat you? Tickle. O apple tree leaves. Remember hands.

If you wave goodbye. If you wave come back. If you twirl

enough, will you learn to welcome surrender, hands?

Pilgrim

I see you collect the scatter of houses

that abandoned you. Friend, I see

you lick the backs of photographs

like stamps & still they fall from

your shoulders. In this one you are young-

before countries & children. Sit down.

Like you, I collect what worries me. Fatherlands

are ominous & comforting like the eyes

of those who love us, & my city is a leash

that suffocates me the farther I stray

from the Mediterranean between the buildings.

The swing sings its rust in the wind.

Neither water nor stone will do. I've given up

cigarettes & libations, I separate the jars

on the bookshelves-these are for the ash

& these for the pickled cheap icons.

No matter how much vinegar I pour,

the Marys never close their eyes. No matter

how many times dawn is slaughtered,

I cry when the minarets crow.

daily                     

my little country is not enough



here the rain

is the peasant's god

& the driver's curse







no remedy but

antidepressants & prayer





here even the atheist prays

for prayer is a sport

like smoking in the morning

& prayer is an art

like singing in mourning



& language without

god lacks longing

& everyone knows the only answer

to all difficult questions is

to give thanks



my little country is not enough



i abandon it every day & i return

then abandon it again

carrying, always, bags of pine nuts









& a tin of olive oil in its wooden coffin

so the airport security would let me through

(put anything in a coffin & they'll let you through)









my little country is not enough



i lose it every day on purpose & weep

i whisper come back follow the bread scent

follow the lemon & minefields

follow the wailing of the ambulance

follow the songs of the dead & the living





i lose it every century every hour

& it returns every exile saying remember







these vagabond days are old are new

like the poet's love for balconies





triptych: you & my country & i

   . . .     . . .   

  -


under the kitchen light   have you noticed             my lipstick

your head full of whiskey              we chant  / biladi / my countries               how 70s

your sweat how you melt             for  / baladi / my country              how predictable this hurt

how your chin hangs lower          is my country     neither poppy nor earth

neither young nor old     multitudinous or              just your daily

turning turning  it is infinite          this longing

inside this unforgiving    is it a trench        this tongue

consider               is  only masculine no       both are possible

laughter & the evening   is  feminine because        inside the rib cage

the humming      what woman doesn't know          the burning

of the refrigerator           the bodies the bodies     the crying

& all this talk      within    Without

about what we inherit    the body the body           the bread

& what land now             i wonder              is just spill

take off your shoes          & your toes        & my nails

aren't they beautiful       aren't they beautiful       aren't they beautiful

Dear white critic,                             

If I told you I do not choose to write

about war & the children, would you believe me?

-   

I'm tired of knocking on the doors of empires.

If I told you these words are

not in English, would you believe me?



. 





Though & because it confuses the tongue,

let me repeat this: the flowers are ours the flowers

are ours the flowers are ours.



-





Yes the earth turns & there is time between us,

but my universe is neither corner

nor as dark as you've called it. Do you believe me?

.  



:   

One of the boys, I

climbed over the school wall & jumped

into the olive grove.

.     

I gifted my first love a green pit.



I'm tired of metaphors about peace.

I prefer dark chocolate in the morning,

& a good window.



!    



Today I got a massage & painted

white petals on two red nails.

Do you believe me?





.

I don't know if I envy God his existence

outside of time, or if he envies my angst

inside the body.





.

If I told you I'm not that other

Arab poet you've read, would you believe me?

Do I thank you for your interest?













Do my names tire you? Good.

My cities are cities & my singers are singers.

Go google.



This is the first & last poem I speak to you.

.    

Yes I believe in bridges.

If reading maps didn't bore me,

I would have learned it.





. 

Sometimes I read the horoscopes

because I love my horns.

.    

Goodbye now.



I banish I banish you from these lines.



.  

Everything Here Is an Absolute

Bar Farouk, Beirut, 2016 perhaps

Look at where this nostalgia has brought us. We go down the stairs

& order frozen margaritas. It's been years since

we've lived here. The waiter shows us

our table, hopes we don't mind two American boys

sitting with us. There's no space for them elsewhere in this

cabaret called Metro in a capital without metros.

We say we don't mind. We are used to this city of small spaces

into which everything fits. The foreign students are our age

about a decade ago. They tell us their names & I decide to call them

Ahmad & Faysal. They agree. As the performers go onstage,

as the songs & smoke rise, we raise a toast & Ahmad & Faysal smile

& clap nonstop. They've even learned the Arab shoulder shimmy.

Once I've margarita-ed enough I start explaining

song lyrics-She's warning him he will regret & it's no disaster

if he leaves, & yes motor is pronounced motore & suddenly

I discover I don't really know who Zayn al-Abideen is

though I've been singing for him all my life. Yay yay yay

needs no interpretation. Neither do the colorful costumes

& feathers & all this going back in time. I want to shout

no one eats hummus with carrots, & no one calls this

pita bread, it's just bread, khobz, because everything here

is an absolute. Faysal says thank you & I remember

one expression for thank you is May your hands

be safe & sound. Then I ask, Doesn't Beirut

remind you of New York? His silence is polite,

to which I argue there are no fire escapes here,

but there could have been. Some cities burn faster than others.

I Beiruted East Houston at first sight & my friend

disagreed & said streets were making me delirious again.

What I mean is if you write your name on a wall & find it

gone, you say, My name has left. Would you feel abandoned?

Would you trace it again? What I mean is there are songs

where the fallen don't have rope enough to climb out of wells,

& there are songs where lovers return when the night deepens.

Revolution Song

For Lebanon, October 2019

With raised fists, with floods of fury, with ululation,

with forbidden song, with the 8:00 p.m. clatter of pots and pans,

with heartbreak, with memes, with rapture, with hands, we call this revolution.

How you laugh, how you march,

how you rest, how you run, how you get caught

in your dangerous hope. No one can wall this revolution.

And love is difficult, and love is divine. And if you must

have God, let it be love. Let it be love with its toil and terror,

let it be love with its prophecy and mess,

let it be love with its rise and fall. This revolution

is now like our bodies, is eternal like dust. Is on balconies, is on screens,

is in beds, is on streets, is in the mind, is in the mind, is in the mind,

is in the breath and the eyeball, this revolution.

Praise the candle flames and the tire fumes

praise the graffiti and the broken glass

praise the names of cities and villages

praise the old man who leans on his cane and chants

praise the young man who pounds on the wall (is he crying?)

praise the detainees who won't be beaten into silence

praise those who wait for them under the rain

praise this October birth, every month be October,

every year, every ache and balm be October,

praise the dancing and the sweat and the tired feet

praise the swearing and the red flare and the rage

praise, praise it all, this revolution.

Close the roads and open them. Occupy the streets-

bring the tires, the sofas, the drums, the blaring cars.

Close the dead palaces of power and resurrect

the abandoned places, the squares, that infinite

country inside you. Close the roads and open them.

Close the classrooms and open the tents,

bring vinegar and cloth, bring your hurt and your tongue,

let it wreck and awaken and enthrall, this revolution.

The name is thawra, and thawra is woman. The woman who kicked

the thug in the gut, the woman they came for with sticks,

the woman they came for with law,

the woman who fed and the woman who prayed,

who kissed her lover on the street, who steadied her child on her waist,

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0143136895
• ISBN 13: 9780143136897
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112