Like We Still Speak

Danielle Badra

• Verlag: University of Arkansas Press
• Jahr: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781610757515
• Thema: Littérature
• Thema: Poésie

Winner of the 2021 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize Conversation and memory are at the heart of Danielle Badra's Like We Still Speak, winner of the 2021 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. In her elegiac and formally inventive debut, Badra carries on talking with the sister and father she has lost, often setting her words alongside theirs and others' in polyphonic poems that can be read in multiple directions. Badra invites the reader to engage in this communal space where she investigates inheritance, witnessing, intimacy, and survival."This is a deeply spiritual book, all the more so because of its clarity and humility. Yet, we cannot walk away from the addictive command that so many of these poems ask us to follow: to read them along plural paths whose order changes while their immeasurable spirit remains unbound. Each poem is a singular vessel—of narratives, embodiments that correspond with memories, memories that recollect passion.... Like We Still Speak is a sanctum. Inside it, we are enthralled by beauty, consoled by light, sustained by making."
—Fady Joudah and Hayan Charara, from the Preface

I.

(Sister) (Sister)

sitting on

sandy beach

toes dipped over

freshwater’s cold edge

sandal lines seen

on her so tan feet

sunning herself asleep

she carries her

poems like figs

shaken from the tree

of knowledge or heartbreak

or picked from a window

in Lebanon

calling them figs

does not describe her harvest

or her for that matter

it does not tell you

how important she is to me

or everything i haven’t said

she is still on the beach

she is always

up shore from me

almost close enough to witness her

barefoot markings falter mid-sand

i will follow her faded trail

she is still astray

from safety & from land

into water

it starts waist deep and drops

off quick she holds

her breath

i am worried for us

the hourglass is stagnant

is sideways

i can’t recall

our childhood

all on my own i can’t

remember when

we became sisters

embracing in mom’s blue robe

or when she first held up my head

sometimes i worry

that the next time we meet

we will no longer know

each other she

will dream in idioms

that i don’t understand

or she will not

understand why my fire

has never

burned as fiercely as hers

there is always the hope

that we can hold out

our harvest to each other

we will see and savor

everything we need to

though this would mean

that i would have

to pluck more than

one fig

a year

photographs are not sufficient

to tell her story

i know she loved me eventually

but love was after worry that

i’d be better loved than her

snapshot of two kids

piled up on a paisley couch

with mom euphoric

there are parts of her

that i will never know

or if i did know

they would not mean

what they should

she has outlived

what i wish i could

take away from her

what hurts most

was left unresolved

there will always be

this fig

sitting in my

stomach rot

undissolving

she is not to blame

i am not to blame

too

if she can read this

she is haunting my hands

trying to talk

or type in Times to what

she was i am

sorry if i’m wrong

it’s been so long since we last laughed together

was it February

when we

facetimed four years ago

it was

her smile that made me cry

i would

if that wouldn’t take away

her fire

which is something

i could never do

i only hope that her harvest

will not become like

dead birds

swollen

with guilt

and decomposition

i hope that it will remain

like figs to her

nourishing if small

and beautiful despite

the heat of the sun

i hope that she will grow

like the fig trees

that live in her

through cracks

in the earth’s rind

i sobbed over

the color green this morning

olive bikini

at the bottom of her plastic tub

of summer clothes

that looked better on her

than me

she always knew how to

dress me

how to braid my

hair like i braid

her words

like we still speak

Inheritance

That feeling that mutilated apple now mush beneath my boot

that pervades coats the orchard ground in an aroma of utter decay

all my being— that saccharine soil mother carried a daughter across.

On edge, jumpy, the feeling I get now when I get too close to rot.

Vigilant, on patrol— the putrid stench of autumn prepping for tundra

while on the outside my body resists a glimpse of death’s willing gaze.

I try to look at my body in the full face of the new moon

composed, in control, the smile I make for good measure

laid-back even. The smile of a triggered pain.

What ...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Series Editors’ Preface
• I.
• II.
• III.
• Notes
• Acknowledgments