The Red Pencil
Page 8
in a healthy season.
A red pencil!
Yellow sheets for writing!
A happy quick-beat drums in me,
deep.
PARTING GLANCE
Miss Sabine gathers her pouches,
now empty.
The children are busy,
fanning their tablets,
playing with pencils.
This ginger-skinned lady glances at me,
her starshine eyes warm with kindness,
with encouragement.
With permission.
When the intake man escorts Miss Sabine away,
I say good-bye with a single wave,
wishing she would stay forever.
Next to Miss Sabine’s
lean elegance,
the intake man
is a bloated goat.
A safari suit with many pockets
is too tight
for his squat body.
Green-dark sunglasses
mask his eyes.
STRAIGHT AND SHINY
Something about the red pencil
begs me to hold it tightly.
When I do,
it feels strange
between my thumb
and three of my fingers.
It’s nothing like my twig.
It’s straight and shiny,
and short.
I press its pointed end
to the yellow tablet’s
paper face.
The pencil is not only red
on the outside.
It’s red inside, too!
I force a mark
no bigger than the
skin crease in my bent fingers
that grip this strange,
shiny,
pointed thing that is not a twig.
The red half-a-dash
I’ve struck on the page
is enough drawing for
today.
I do not like this pencil.
I thought I would,
but somehow
I don’t.
This pencil is hard to hold,
and much too skinny.
BLOCKED
My pencil tries to draw
what I remember of Nali.
But something in me
will not let
the red
shape her face,
ears,
nose.
Nali’s nose.
Always nuzzling me at night,
always waking me,
warm
with its prodding.
Nali, always tickling me,
wanting to play.
This I miss most about Nali.
Why can’t I make
my pencil
shape
a picture
of Nali’s body,
plump as a feed sack
stuffed with grain?
OLD ANWAR’S LAMENT
He speaks to me gently,
as if I’m his baby lamb.
“Precious Amira,
if I could,
I would chase off the pain
that has robbed your beautiful voice.
“I would replace the missing part
that has fallen from your heart.
“I would pull your voice
from inside my pocket,
lift it out,
present it to you with open hands.
“If I could,
I would stitch
that missing patch
back to your very essence.
“I would sprinkle magic goz
to summon your speaking.
“Precious Amira,
if I could,
I would mend
what has been snipped
from your soul.”
Old Anwar, if only you could.
WIFE
The girl with the rude husband
is ahead of us in the water line.
She sits on the ground,
waiting her turn,
edging forward.
At the front,
she stands up,
gets two gallons,
trudges off the line,
panting.
Later, women gather to wash clothes.
I’m helping Muma.
The girl
is holding up a man’s wet underpants.
They are stained
with what looks like remnants
of smeared plop.
She pounds at the plop with a rock.
Wrings out the underpants,
sets them on a mat to dry.
Muma says,
“That is a wife’s love.”
There is nothing to love about a rude man’s plop.
INSIDE THE FLICKER BOX
Leila’s bad dreams
and Gamal’s grief
have rubbed their anguish
onto me.
Now I am the one
overcome.
I wake,
chilled,
even though the night is warm.
My mind
is filled with
demon dreams
of the flicker box.
The teethy people
inside that loud,
lighted thing
are trying to
bite my knuckles!
Halima is there, too,
inside the flicker box,
smiling,
waving fast,
so glad to see me!
I shimmy high up
on the pole where
the flicker box lives.
Tear off the front
of the flicker-box face.
Climb inside.
Hug Halima.
We play dizzy donkey!
We talk, talk, talk,
and sing,
and spin all day.
STIRRING A POT
Old Anwar has found a wheelbarrow
for collecting firewood.
Its hinges are rusted,
creaking a tired groan.
He’s loaded the wheelbarrow’s
dented well with a teetering mound
of split-open logs.
The sure hands
of this old man
prepare a cooking pit
for stirring a pot.
Our meal is a makeshift mix
of greens,
salt,
rice,
and onions,
going stale.
Old Anwar boils and sips from
a warped spoon.
His cook’s flame
licks the bottom
of the pot,
set in the center of
our tiny dome-home.
Old Anwar has enhanced
the meal with lentils.
Old Anwar gathers us.
We pray,
then eat.
We scoop with
cupped fingers,
holding crusts of bread.
The food is good,
soothing.
It is made tasty
by Old Anwar’s proclamation:
“We are now a family.”
NEEDLE NOSES
They are quick.
They stick
to the too-small net
that does not stretch far enough
to fully protect us
from their needle noses.
For them,
this is a party.
They are gathered
and glued to the sheer,
flimsy veil.
I tuck the net in at each rice-bag corner,
pin its open flaps to the sand
with flat stones.
I might as well be trying to cover
the whole desert
with my foot’s shadow.
Their celebration continues
as dusk brings more hungry guests
who slip under,
around,
in.
Now
the fun really begins—for them.
For us, it’s a fight.
Swatting!
Whacking!
Bothered by these pests, now singing.
Vzzzz-vzzzz-vzzzz!!!
Needle noses want one thing—
our warm blood.
For them,
our blood is delicious juice.
As much as we swat
and fling,
they still win.
Leaving itchy welts
in their wake.
Leaving us swollen
and scratching
all night long.
For them,
paradise!
Why did Allah make mosquitoes?
SESAME OIL
Every mosquito
in all of Sudan
must be rejoicing today.
Their blood-sucking party
was a grand celebration.
Muma slathers me,
Leila,
and Gamal
with sticky sesame oil.
“It will keep mosquitoes away,”
she claims.
I hope she’s right.
Those pointy-nosed pests
have blotched my skin
with their ugly designs.
This is why
I let Muma
turn me
into a greased girl.
QUESTIONS
My voice,
still silenced,
is buried.
Still, I do not speak.
Still, I cannot speak.
Yet,
there are many questions
I want to ask my mother.
But I do not ask.
I cannot ask.
Perhaps it is good
that I do not,
cannot.
My questions would vex Muma.
Yet,
I want to ask my mother
why she bothers to sweep
the dirt floor
of our dirty hut.
I want to ask my mother
what she prays for each morning,
and at dusk.
I want to ask my mother
if she saw my father fall.
There are so many questions
I do not,
cannot,
ask my mother.
I do not
want to vex my mother.
NEW NEIGHBOR
Who are you, bushy bundle?
Waddling with a will
through the crevice
that separates our hut
from the one next door.
I see you nosing your way
past trash
and dirt-caked paths
that have carved themselves
between
half-baked homes,
hungry
for anything
that will change them
from makeshift
to livable.
Bushy bundle,
what brings you here
to the cruddy gutters
of Kalma?
I never saw a creature
like you on our village farm.
It’s only when Old Anwar
spots your waddle
that I learn of the proper name
chosen for you by Allah,
when the Almighty was molding creatures.
Old Anwar greets you with
the same respect
he shows all living things.
He bows to address you.
“Hello, hedgehog.”
WITHERING
What is happening
to my strong-as-a-tree mother?
Muma is shriveling,
like a dried-up hibiscus flower.
On our farm,
Muma could stretch tall enough
to meet a mango
hanging from the fingertips of a branch,
ripe for picking.
Here,
Muma stoops.
Here,
she has nothing to reach for.
SAD-QUIET
Leila’s new ditty
is a tinny whisper.
“My sister can’t sing.
My sister can’t shout.
My sister’s voice,
it won’t come out.
My sister, so sad.
My sister, so quiet.
My sister’s sad-quiet
will not go away.
My sister’s sad-quiet
will not let her say,
‘Sister Leila,
let’s go play!’
My sister’s sad-quiet
makes me sad-quiet, too.”
FENCES
Who planted these blue
rows
on my yellow paper’s face?
Why these lines?
They are ugly wire fences
preventing
my pencil
from roaming.
My sparrow
is trying to
fly,
but struggling.
She cannot
lift.
The up-jumpy bird
inside me,
the spirit-wings that soar
when I draw,
are trapped behind
these blue-bar barricades.
When the papermakers
were making paper,
did anyone ask,
Why these lines?
NO BLUE BOUNDARIES
Today the red pencil does more
than beg for my hand.
It makes me a promise.
It tells me to try.
Ignore these blue lines.
Just draw.
This pencil
must somehow know
that by gripping tightly,
while letting it wander,
I can free the pictures
raging through my memory.
AWAKENED
Today my sparrow starts to flutter.
My soul’s bird wakes,
calling me
to draw
a wicked helicopter
with the face of a camel,
spitting big bullets.
Below are tiny people,
powerless.
Running for cover
like ants in a rainstorm.
Dando is among them,
dying.
DRENCHED
A downpour
of bloodshed,
falling fast,
like rain,
after bullets fly.
Dot! Dot!
Dot! Dot!
Dot.
Dot! Dot!
Dot!
Dot!
Dot! Dot! Dot!
Dot!
Dot! Dot! Dot!
Dot! Dot!
Dot!
Dot!
Dot! Dot!
Dot! Dot!
Dot!
Dot!
Dot! Dot!
LISTENING
There’s a distant call,
something muffled,
coming from a locked place.
It’s bumping against
the sides of a box,
wanting to be freed.
Ya… ya… it tells me.
Listen.
The voice is a little bit familiar.
But still, I must strain to
fully make it out.
Ya… ya… ya…
My pencil helps.
It crafts the sound.
Ya… ya…
the pencil’s music.
It plays on paper,
shows me highs,
lows,
in-betweens.
Ya… ya…
my pencil sings.
My sparrow springs!
A quick-rush—ya… ya.
Suddenly I see.
Suddenly—ya… ya—I hear
clearly.
The muffled,
bumping,
more-faint-than-a-whisper,
; aching-for-sound,
is me,
preparing to speak.
FREEING MUMA
Another night of Muma’s silent pain.
This time I won’t let her cry alone.
I can’t do that to Muma.
It’s cruel to ignore her.
It’s unkind to pretend I don’t hear my mother
aching.
I know Muma wishes I didn’t see her
when she weeps.
But too bad.
She’ll just have to face the shame.
I go to her pallet,
gently put both hands at her back.
Muma sits up quickly,
turns to me,
her eyes tired.
Then it happens.