OCTOBERS: Poems (Pitt Poetry Series) - Softcover

Muradi, Sahar

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0822967081 ISBN 13: 9780822967088

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023

Synopsis

Longlist Finalist, 2023 Julie Suk Award<br><br><i>OCTOBERS</i> traces the four great tumults of the author’s life, all of which originated in that jagged month of different years: The US invasion and occupation of her native Afghanistan, the death of her father, the sudden end of a love, and the birth of her daughter. The poems chart heartbreak along a helix, progressively and recursively, where “echoes are inevitable.” Ultimately, the collection is concerned with language—as witness and buoy in the white waters of loss, as a tool for violences small and state-crafted, as an asymptote both approaching ideas of “home” and estranged from it, and, beyond it all and still, as a source of wild wonder.

About this title

About the Author

<b>Sahar Muradi </b>is author of the chapbooks <i>[ G A T E S ]</i>, <i>A Garden Beyond My Hand</i>, and <i>Ask Hafiz: A Migration Story Told through Poetic Divination</i>. She is coeditor of <i>One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature</i> and <i>EMERGENC(Y): Writing Afghan Lives beyond the Forever War: An Anthology of Writing from Afghanistan and Its Diaspora</i>, and coauthor of <i>A Ritual in X Movements</i>. She is a recipient of the Stacy Doris Memorial Poetry Award and the Patrons’ Prize for Emerging Writers from Thornwillow Press, as well as a finalist for the National Poetry Series and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Sahar is cofounder of the Afghan American Artists &amp; Writers Association and dearly believes in the bottom of the rice pot.<b></b>

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

<b>Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.</b><br><b>Excerpt from OCTOBERS: Poems by Sahar Muradi</b><br><b></b><br><br> <b></b><br><b>Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.</b><br><b>Excerpt from OCTOBERS: Poems by Sahar Muradi</b><br><b></b><br><b>washee/was she </b><br><br>she was washee i told her you are <br>like your motherland a wilderness <br>needs a belt laid down two white <br>hotel towels took her into the tub to <br>wudu the boys out of her mouth pointed <br>her nipples toward qibla wiped clean <br>her intention to perform ruk’u as if <br>carrying a glass of chai on her back <br>fold at the knees palms to the ground <br>tucked her soles under her astaghfirullah <br>used country <br><br>in my used country I felt his teeth <br>circle as a mosquito the black mystery <br>he placed my right hand over my wrong <br>stain said he was bringing me home <br>offered me a suite with a lock a key in <br>the shape of a brother perhaps twenty- <br>two years old my body pure as a glass <br>table he spilled was she my boss on my <br>back at night came easy as a fly <br>to post-conflict faithfully <br>used my country <br><br> --- <br><br><b>Grasping </b><br><br>1 <br>Time, I am leaning into you <br>pushing all my chips to your corners. <br>Here in the grief of my hands, <br>in the elegies of grasping, <br>remind me how useful it was, <br>the arrow. <br><br>2 <br>Lessons of infancy: <br>When he leaves the room, <br>he does not exist. <br>If I am hungry, <br>I am permitted to wail. <br>And above my head, the mobile. <br>What finer constellations outside myself. <br><br>3 <br>Echoes are inevitable. <br>The long space behind my body, <br>the tall stem of day hissing through the clock, <br>avoiding the gaps. <br>What does it mean to live in the gaps, <br>in the places where it is groundless, <br>to be so open <br>to this one morning with its distinct wink? <br><br>4 <br>Something about surrender. <br>At dawn, a pledge of white flags. <br>Turning over what I cannot hold: <br>a library of nouns. <br>What courage it takes to admit one’s size, <br>to polish the day over and over <br>grasping nothing. <br><br> ---<br><br><br><b>counterparts </b><br><br>not all fear can be worked through <br>the ocean’s example, constantly emptying <br><br>the nasturtiums, she instructed me, were edible <br>we ate the leaf, then the flower <br><br>despite his clouds, he believes in life <br>how we tire of one another’s othering <br><br>I count the blessings <br>to keep from hurting him <br><br>the day circles <br>as a mosquito <br><br>when they lifted the cloth <br>I saw one that was not you <br><br>stood in my own corridor <br>and remarked the lack of windows <br><br>but I preferred to continually peel the orange and reject the fruit <br>wouldn’t it taste of heartbreak <br><br>I was invited to take flight into the red road <br>to place my palm on the rock that formed the scripture <br><br>grief being vital <br>its violence being necessary <br><br>I rub the shadows <br>even in the garden <br><br>the prison of living by conviction <br>so many prisons <br><br>I will move more slowly <br>and it will still be a move <br><br>eyes of little night <br>and so, aching <br><br>his voice high-pitched and proving himself <br>back into my own body, eyes <br><br>I believe in doom and all its sister griefs <br>I believe in my thoughts reducing me to negligible <br><br>I believe in the words that I make up to color myself <br>we may not like you, but we love you in a very special way <br><br>embarrassed of my lines that grow out of ether <br>and die in ether <br><br>feel the light shrink <br>the breath small <br><br>may you inch in the direction of trust <br>hold the tail of your instinct <br><br>may you fail and get up to see <br>you did not die <br><br>may you expose your poems to the u/v <br>to the later atmospheres of your own doubt <br><br>arrive with the bow taut, and he notices <br>asks if it’s pointed at him <br><br>i learned from my mother who left mines all across the house <br>the point was to startle us into guilt <br><br>imagine the future <br>as if your narrow divination could ever know <br><br>he and you will be two parallel lines <br>never touching <br><br>he will not leave <br>and you will punish him for that <br><br>what are the ways I try to be free <br>I wondered against the clock <br><br>a kind of life that is not certain <br>but alive <br><br>she spoke of fundamentalism <br>as the understandable reaction to capitalist consumerism <br><br>toys don’t satisfy the question <br>why am I here <br><br>I look for another answer <br>my answer is * <br><br>how to make perfect? <br>seal every corner? edge god out? <br><br>the gnarled root of time <br>I touched it; it did not speak <br><br>The problem was always <br>trying to explain my face to everyone <br><br>here is my will: bright as a firecracker <br>here is his will: brighter <br><br>in the eye, notice the lake <br>in the lake, behold the sunken boats <br><br>in the boats are worms gnawing on the past <br>at the bottom of the past is the solid earth

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822967081
• ISBN 13: 9780822967088
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 120