The Lost Arabs

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by Omar Sakr


  an ugly flag. Plant a new one

  in their mouths. This kind of loss

  has not been measured, it has no body

  count, but we have all the time

  in the world to weigh it now.

  We have all the time in the world.

  *When I wrote this poem in 2017, I was referring to statistics from 2016. As I write this in 2018, I can tell you that in 2017 America dropped 40,000 bombs. From 2014 to 2017, at least 94,000 bombs. In my lifetime alone, the sheer tonnage of destruction and chaos that has been unleashed on majority Muslim or Arab nations has been nothing short of catastrophic, year after year of staggering violence that the population of Western countries seem to accept. Go back further, past my lifetime, my mother’s, and into my grandfather’s and you will still find ample military campaigns and Western-backed violences to highlight the sustained injustice against Arab peoples. You could not do this to those you saw as fully human. Though I had not the heart to seek out the full body count of Iraqis, Afghanis, Syrians, Yemenis, Palestinians—the refugees drowned in wave after generational wave of forced migration, of certain death at home or a bleakening hope abroad—the munitions alone tell a deadly, horrifying story.

  AT THE SITE OF THE

  FUTURE MEMORIAL

  I will learn every dead body is impossibly foreign.

  Still, their names my name will be lodged

  in throats. I will replace the lost with my blood.

  I have never given so much of myself before

  and, having fucked men this year, usually

  I would not be allowed. Aren’t you all the same

  will echo through loudspeakers as the guilt

  -stricken meander in, awe-splotched &

  delirious. Look at what we did. Look

  how easy it was.

  There will be a fountain splashing blackness &

  haphazard TVs showing only National

  Geographic. I remember laughing at my father who was

  fond of invoking the Afghani kings in our blood.

  He burned to be special, to etch glory in these bones.

  What does it say about me that I call on the erased,

  the shrapnel song of gone? Now that my father is gone

  I will try to make a crown for him to wear

  and say without irony that we kingdomed Western

  Sydney, we wore exquisite costumes. Though imaginary,

  it will be rich with gems. I keep annihilating homelands

  by turning my back I keep surviving somehow.

  I may not be alive for the sight of the future

  memorial, in which case it is important to note

  I am a writer and to write is to squander life.

  It is the only reason I have a place here.

  Aren’t you all the same? I don’t recognise

  the photos here, and I do. Some of the legs

  blown off bodies, those with jeans still on,

  could be mine. I use memory to make them

  walk again. God, do not let me anywhere

  near memory, I beg of you. I keep using it

  as a weapon. It is the only thing I know

  how to do and that should tell you everything.

  AT THE SITE OF THE

  FUTURE MEMORIAL

  I will illegally build my own Statue of Liberty

  alone night and day for a hundred years if need be

  and need be

  so when I am done I can blow her head off

  and fill the jagged cup of her skull

  with tears that will not freeze

  nor dissipate but always drip

  down her stern jaw, her arms, her perfect

  dress and into the upturned thirst

  of anyone unlucky enough to stand in her shadow.

  She has a poignant purpose, yes—for example

  if you tip her over she will be an Ark

  for all the animals liberty has room for,

  but I would be lying if I said I’m doing it

  for any reason other than getting to fuck her

  face up without reprisal.

  AT THE SITE OF THE

  FUTURE MEMORIAL

  Consider all the other memorials & know the difference

  between a memorial and a moratorium, so much lies

  in a name. Consider the many still in construction,

  those never thought of, the denied, design

  in your mind all the palaces of sorrow

  you can stand—one for all who came before,

  for those who remain, for the Great Barrier

  Reef, for roses, for madness, and all extinctions.

  Though we have none of the stones necessary

  each house in my family fits the bill.

  We just don’t charge admission

  AT THE SITE OF THE

  FUTURE MEMORIAL

  I will play footage of American Gods on my phone—no,

  not those hideous drones delivering eternities

  everywhere—I mean, the episode

  with the hung djinn in New York & the salesman,

  two hairy men made cosmic with desire, eyes of fire

  so we can all see a man give to another man his flame

  instead of blood & come away unscathed. Unless

  you count love, unless you count its edge, its sweat.

  Some will say this is an indulgence, an excess,

  but of course the fact he has a big dick is essential,

  not just because it’s beautiful but because it is a weapon

  and because if a man possessed is to be lessened by gay

  sex there must be compensation, a balancing, a coming

  to the senses. I can’t turn my criticism off. Too often

  I mistake cynicism for criticism. My eyes are burning

  again I watch them fuck into astral glory again

  I watch them remake my world again I weep

  as I never have for death.

  AT THE SITE OF THE

  FUTURE MEMORIAL

  I will tear up the usual, the piles of bodies, the oasis,

  the keffiyeh, the dishdasha, the ahwa, the ululation,

  the princedom, the mosque, the minaret, the minutes,

  the taxi driver, the donkey, the lecher, the angry Arab

  Israeli conflict, the hookah, harem, the bloody stones,

  the swanky hotel, pool-side glitz, the rugs, the Rolex,

  the AK-47, the camo, ammo, the fucking politicians,

  the successful literate migrant, the sons of despair,

  the oil fields, the hijabs, the thugs, the clubs,

  the Quran—everything, I will ruin as I was ruined

  once. This, too, is usual. Wait. Turn up the music.

  Play it again, life, the ugly, the pulse. Let me dance

  in the static, cover the bullet holes in feathers

  from every bird. Let me embrace the terrifying

  mirage, the sick self. Let the whole building

  shrug me off and fly

  Waiting for the American Spring

  Everyone has the blizzard on their lips.

  Batten down. Turn the word over:

  a large or overwhelming number of things

  arriving suddenly. What could be

  more appropriate to sum up the American

  condition? A state of being still arriving

  suddenly, welcome or not. Cold corpses

  line the streets, some alleys, maybe

  a park or two—a few no doubt hang

  in a frozen lake, swordless, wondering

  how it was they ate their dreams &

  still went hungry. I’m talking bodies

>   concaved with wanting, talking ice

  -mantled animals. Small losses mount,

  small squalls merge. It’s never sudden,

  not really—more an accumulation.

  You can talk about it before every dawn

  and still be shocked by the force

  when it hits. Another meaning: denote

  a violent blow. As when wind uproots

  an oak, or a boy shakes another boy

  until his teeth shatter. There are cities

  here without clean water. Black bodies

  shaken until they shatter in the street

  as they have since the first blizzard—

  meaning: whiteout—stole them. Now

  the world winters a storm where the stolen

  refuse to remain lost, buried in snow.

  They get up on lips, the as yet unghosted

  armed with the tinder of names. Think

  of all the bodies shivering across country,

  the azan bottled up in blue throats,

  the borders of suddenly always cutting. When

  will this arrival stop overwhelming? You

  can’t build a wall around a season,

  a forest of bone, a land always dying.

  Look to your bleached plains and ask

  how much longer can you last

  without real food or a sprig of green?

  A Moratorium on Cartography

  Burn all the maps. Forget about want

  I need unspoiled long-&-latitudes.

  Some unguttered earth, a place

  even the stars haven’t touched

  where I can come up for air,

  where there is no such thing

  as drowning, and no killing

  but in which I can still die

  a natural death. Impossible

  dreams are for young men.

  I am not as young as necessary.

  It could be a dream this large

  requires age, and I am not old

  either. Countries are unwieldy

  things not to be made alone.

  I wish someone told me that

  before I started building beaches.

  It’s got nothing to do with land,

  that gorgeous animal. I just forgot

  the people. Maybe I meant to &

  I should make the most of these

  acacias, the long tapering bushes

  before they inevitably burst

  into flame, the language not

  of gods but of man. Prometheus

  knew. It is a lesson we unlearn

  as often as we can: alphabets

  are all sinuous destruction.

  All we wanted was to sear

  a moment, a handprint, a hunt

  into the rock to let it know

  our names, unaware naming

  the world would also end it.

  My country resists language.

  It does not want to know you.

  It has its own knowledge, and no

  holes for flags. It can’t be

  stolen. I have carved it out

  of freedom. Now what it means

  to be free is in pieces and there

  is no such thing as peace.

  Tinder

  I would swipe right on torture.

  This is not a great start

  to the relationship. The truth is best

  saved until it’s too late or too hard

  to reject: prevent the body

  from flinching in status-preserving instinct,

  get it to swallow the poison

  of a toxic beginning, a vaccine for history

  that necromantic motherfucker always

  trying to resurrect itself, to live

  again now. We are always saying honesty

  is necessary but nobody talks about when

  or where this razor should be applied,

  as in the case of a poem. Poems do not need

  an I to work the way the system needs

  an eye to work, one for you & nobody

  else. You work better when you only look

  out for yourself. Stay focused

  as you move the blade: I would swipe right

  on torture. I know it happens

  with each scoop of cereal, each crunch

  of sugar electrocuting happiness

  up my spinal column—somewhere

  someone is being electrocuted

  for real and I carry living

  on because this is the price of doing

  business, which in my case is writing

  poems and having one eye and

  trying to stay focused on the wobbling spoon

  of conductive metal aimed at my teeth.

  I put torture in a box and I hide the box

  (which is heavier than my body)

  under my bed, and I wonder how

  I’m going to get someone to fuck me

  on a mattress full of screams.

  Among Bloody Oracles

  Time constantly remembers

  the man tall as anything, his hair electrified

  worms, his hands all knuckles & bone,

  clutching a red white blue striped bag.

  He stood outside my boyhood & I, small

  as anything, approached his unstatic

  body. Turning, one eye wild, one tame,

  he opened his mouth and time zombie

  climbed its way out his gaping lips.

  “My parents were cut down by the SS,”

  he said, then popped out a marbled eye,

  I forget which one, and planted it deep

  across my palmed life & love & loss

  lines. I closed my hand over its hard

  vision, looked up into his black hole

  where a smaller, sadder me wrote

  this poem. I did not know how to say

  sorry for what I could not comprehend.

  I gave back his world, touched now

  by young flesh, to plug the wound.

  Wet with sweat, it would blossom

  next spring, the sweetest flower ever

  to leaf. I tremble on the edge of carpal

  swelling out in concentric whorls

  of luck, that bitter fruit. Today stalks

  rotting memory, pecking out chunks

  of spoil. The past does the same,

  their blood mixing together as I

  walk down the supermarket aisle,

  pick an apple off the mushed face

  of some unfortunate, grab a bottle of

  condensed fiscal uncertainty, and pay

  at the counter, a man in uniform

  who looks like a young woman smiling

  but is a man in uniform cutting down

  a body in a camp somewhere. They

  do not notice I have given an eye to pay,

  but place it in the cash register full

  of all the other eyeballs rolling together

  in the soft wilful dark.

  Self-Portrait as Poetry Defending Itself

  The birds tell me the nest is crucial but can’t hold

  all of us. Stay on the wind as long as it will carry

  you, then find a home, build it from everything

  a tree has let go. My aunty tells me forgetting

  has a survival value by saying nothing at all.

  This is only what I tell myself with her mouth:

  in Arabic, the word for mercy and forgiveness

  is the same. Some birds use lit sticks to fan the

  flames of a bushfire, and feast on what es
capes.

  Those who live tell me there is no such thing

  as escape, that once you’ve been burned

  everything resembles a flame. Who in this

  story deserves mercy and at what cost?

  Should the bird go hungry, the tree unburned

  the air untasked with speeding on death, or me

  the fool at the end of it all trying to make sense

  of suffering. This is only a replica. The pain came

  and went, yet here I am invoking it again, a nest

  I re-create to burn over and over until I learn

  I cannot be saved or forgiven for what I lived

  through. I keep looking to the world for a salvation

  it has never known, keep winging toward a word

  like water, a mirror, a mover, a matter, a mother,

  a word closer to but not as smothering as solace.

  I never want to arrive at a sweetened language,

  or to speak the unfindable word, my sole desire

  is to hold it between my teeth, and to be held.

  Extermination

  The man, of unknown origin, revealed himself

  as Arab when he took his shoes off at the door.

  There were other signs but I cannot tell you.

  He arrived armed for chemical warfare

  as we all do. His socks were soft, grey.

  We told him not to worry, the floor

  was tiled, easy to clean. He insisted on leaving

  his muddiness behind. Flexed his toes on white.

  I followed the tense up his hairy brown

  legs, until his shorts hid the muscled rest.

  He sprayed as he went, tank of poison in hand.

  There were rat droppings in the ceiling.

  A crunchy rain fell, startled cockroaches

  waking to light and death as every child does.

  They kissed his feet and for that I envied them.

  Landscaping

  The grass loops long outside my window. Sags into itself. A thousand lithe men bowing

  in one direction, a lone sunflower here & there draped over their knees. Little sluts.

  I forget to cut them down. It is winter now and the sea of green is bright with death

  as if begging for the attention of the blade. I can’t afford a lawnmower. Still, I picture

  myself pushing a fat hungry thing on the yard, shirtless, a thick beast among snaking

  weeds. I’m unsure what to kill out here. What qualifies as weed: nasty useless unflower,

  purposeless growth—and anything that isn’t beautiful has no purpose, I’ve heard.

  The grass though, if grass it is, has such luscious curls. It tells there is beauty in neglect.

 

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