Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Four Poems

2022; University of Hawaii Press; Volume: 34; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/man.0.0070

1527-943X

Terese Svoboda,

Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts

Four Poems Terese Svoboda (bio) alphabet Portraits of graduates line the room, even the childrenof the second wife, even her! as dead as your husband. He was taken and beaten—governor at last—at last releasedbut falling to the ground, your son putting a phone to his head. You were in Egypt, in exile, safe.All he said was A-B-C-D, what men repeat during torture so they reveal nothing, or to bear itwithout screaming, or remembering how they learned the alphabet under a tree, with the flies thickand the good smell of milk on their hands. A-B-C-D, you say over tea. Have a biscuit?I helped you cook long ago, crosslegged on cement in a soot-black kitchen open to the sky.In the yard, a circle of chairs, your husband pouring the scotchof some aid worker wanting some permission. When kerosene half-lit their faces, the speeches began.Ret tried to hush them, but they went on and on into the absolute black of the Sudanese night,democracy off-stage, just a little beyond. [End Page 90] thanksgiving "Stuplimity," a mash-up of "stupefaction" and "the sublime," is a state of paralysis or pessimistic stupor by the sheer, iterated monstrosity of the situation. Sianne Ngai It is turkey weekend, days after the U.N.declared bio-diversity officially over. You and your brother say we have a couple of decades left.I will be dead, perhaps naturally, whatever that means. But you do nothing: you do not protest, knock on doors,or welcome refugees or count the last few birds. Black Friday, the color of our next morning,I sign you up for an urban survival class, a go-pack, a map, the deer not in headlightsbut butchered in some hand-wrought slaughter. No lunch was skipped in your upbringing,no movie unseen, the few clothes you wanted you wore, even the tux at a hilarious age. All of this,like the inverted V of the few geese left, will fly off, comfort after comfort,into the shriek of sirens, the water graying with filth, the tick of radiation counting your life in halfamid mobs of real want. One branch of the family is pioneer, the other pilgrim.Adversity has shaped our courage. Let some surprised Jeremiah rise out of your lassitude,coded deep, just needing a jolt of desperation. You know, Jeremiah, the weeping prophet?The one who condemned his people for burning their children as offerings to god, who prophesiedthe end of Jerusalem. For him we give thanks. [End Page 91] forty-the-roy A period of forty days in medieval times when it was forbidden to attack the nearest relatives of the offender. While the lord readies the slaughter, it's a game of Safe,where ancient aunties pack the armoire or negotiate or marry out, your grandma fixes up crackers and cheesefor the car, and twelve cousins find an ally in an alley and fight back to steal you awayfrom the oubliette. You're in custody, you're wearing that orange suitand already eat crap you can't swallow. Because of love or just blood, everyone elsewho showed up for your party is guilty and have only forty days to painthash marks over their faces to avoid Exit. The drones over your house stay noisy on pause,your kids play ball and the wife walks the dog for now. Then the lord has all this tedious killing to do,every excess gene threatening his next generation. What about Uncle Harry? You never even spoke to him.He's eating the bones of your poached whatever animal, found in the lord's trash that is always his to burn,which is his, burning, until you, in your loud outfit that will stink of chemicals the second you're torched,your ankles cuffed and your fingertips blue with incriminating ink, you say: Fine, let's begin. [End Page 92] caned A stick, pared clean—no, a silver-toppedbamboo-with-dagger, class doubling as club,the advantage of gravity lifted highovercoming the disadvantage of poking ahead. He...