#172: Two Poems by Bobbi Lurie

            

~This poem was previously published in Nimrod (2002).

KABUL

This afternoon I went to the jar, sank my finger in the honey. 

No one saw me so I let the sweetness linger on my tongue. 

At night I paint black around my eyes.

I wash it off at morning.

When everyone’s asleep, I draw on scraps of paper 

I’ve collected, the backs of labels, edges torn from newspapers.

This is my secret.

                        *

Coming back from the highway with my brothers,

I dropped my spade, went to lean against the shed,

Heard Father’s voice coming from within.

He was laughing with Abdullah who says he’ll buy me

For three bags of wheat

When Father’s done with me.

When he does I’ll slash my body with petrol, 

Strike the match like Laida did.

I watched those two fools empty a giant vat of honey

Into another vat, saw them pull out long tubes 

They scraped with their hands, licked with their tongues. 

Beneath the amber honey, I saw guns.

Father caught me looking, jumped off his chair, 

His hands were claws dripping towards me, 

Shoving me hard against the wall, grabbing me there. 

Whore!! he screamed then spit on me.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. 

I covered my face.

Back in the tent 

Mother was making lentils, 

Hunched over the fire.

I pulled the spoon from her hand, stirred the pot 

As if I were her daughter.

                        *

Today, walking with my brothers, I saw Bashir.

He was leaning against a wall, one leg missing.

I knew, still a shock went through me 

Seeing the dirty rags tied around his stump, the blood dried,

What looked like pus. 

And how he stood as if he had a leg.

Strange how we never speak 

But I walk through him with my eyes, 

Enter his hidden rooms. 

He was speaking with Khangal about the enemy

But his soft eyes were blazing holes in me,

Forcing me to see the sky and trees with deeper color.

Khangal saw me looking, threw his spade hard against my leg,

The pain was so intense. I bled and bled,

Putting pressure on the wound with just my hand,

My burkha drenched in blood,

He pulled me up by my hair.

I burned in the part of me which was not hurt.

                        *

Tonight Father had guests. I heard them say 

They liked the bread.

I baked it 

While Mother took a nap. 

She did not say

I baked it. She turned her back to me.

                        *

I feel sickness inside me all the time.

I enter the back rooms with my father, 

  

Creep out like a rat trapped in its maze,

Seek escape in the next cage where Mother stands

Brewing the food, keeping us snared in this affliction called life.

And I think of our martyrs dying for freedom. 

I would like to die for freedom.

But I am a woman

And I do not believe in the paradise Father speaks about

While he beats me with his stick.

                        *

But everyday I keep collecting my scraps of paper.

And when everyone’s asleep, 

I draw Bashir, his stump, my father with his guns,

My mother hunched over the fire, stirring lentils.

I draw them all out of me.

I open myself to the darkness.

I wait for night to speak.

 *****

 ~This poem was previously published in Karamu (2005).

WHAT WE REMEMBER MAY NOT REMEMBER US

1.

The clouds and the shadows of the clouds.

The early light, like the night undressing herself

revealing pink beneath, underneath

the glory and the intimacy

like early love made of arms

only arms

fingers

and the lingering promise

of something else.

2.

To breathe into what is. . . 

Feelings dead and dry as winter branches

body poached and flattened

the sky with its glaucoma stare

the way you call yourself “I” and mean it

and want to be seen as such

as noun

as verb

as some idea which others can not see.

3.

The plain loneliness of painters.

Their lust for colors

and the underneath of it.

It was Modigliani who saved me

from the dark unknowableness.

It was Soutine.

It was Cezanne.

It was the yellow and the green of it.

4.

And I can not tell them.

I can not tell the painters or the colors what they have done.

And I can not say what the clouds are.

Each shape passes me with its blues and its endless hues of white

and light and the longing which bleeds

into

the inner world.

*****

THE STORY BEHIND THE POEMS

            Both of these poems express my gratitude for art and both came about spontaneously, which is not something that happens all that often.

            Re: "Kabul”: After 9/11, I wrote “Kabul,” juxtaposing facts I was devouring about women living under The Taliban with realities I was never able to express in my own life. In spite of all the trials of life under the restraints of a harsh and repressive culture, making art in secret, is what saves the speaker’s, and this speaker’s, life.

            In writing “What We Remember May Not Remember Us,” I was sitting on the floor, feeling an  urge to paint or write about the beauty of the trees outside my window, and it struck me that the people (the artists) who showed me how to live were people I would never be able to meet or thank. This is a poem of gratitude for the artists who help me survive my life.

*****

ABOUT BOBBI LURIE

Bobbi Lurie is the author of four poetry collections, most recently, the morphine poems (Otoliths, Australia).  The beginning chapters of her book on Marcel Duchamp can be found in Berfrois.