poetry

This trimester, in addition to writing my senior thesis on the intersections of compassion and poverty in care for ill and dying children in Kenya, in addition to transitioning back into life away from Kenya, in addition to learning how to walk peacefully through life’s unexpected gusts of wind, I am taking a creative writing class which has me delving into the world of writing poetry.

Poetry has been a source of grounding since I first stumbled through what has become a familiar transition between home places as I left Kenya in 2010.  Since that time, the simultaneous simplicity and depth of poetry’s words have always lent a voice to my soul in ways I previously didn’t know it could, or needed, to speak.

But I’ve hardly written poetry.  I write almost daily, often in short lines and in what could, I suppose occasionally, be considered magical language like that of poems. But very rarely have I sat down to a blank piece of paper with the intention to create a work of poetry. I’ve always imagined there was too much on my heart and in my mind to be condensed in such a way as most poetry is written. And so I’ve written essays and stories and reflections, describing days in detail, erring each thought and feeling in sentences and paragraphs and unbounded musings.  I value honesty and vulnerability in my writing, and saw this as being best honored by a piece’s lengthy complexity.  And I still do.

But I’m also learning to see the power of challenging one’s self to constrain, condense, and consider each word carefully without sacrificing, and even sometimes increasing, its meaning, its impact, its integrity.  In some cases, being confined in the amount of words, space, or syllables written, the most true sentiments are able to surface and, forced to remove the excess, I am able to see more clearly those deeper parts of my self and soul and story needing to to be spoken.

In a time in my life which, more than at any other point and with many different faces, seems determined to teach me of liminality and the Buddhist teachings of keeping steady through groundlessness, I find myself ever thankful for humanity’s capacity to write and for this new world of writing which is challenging me to allow words to heal and to grow us in a plurality of forms.

Some of my poems:

Evans

I remember how his breath lifted

and sank, like an accordion with holes rendering its crinkled paper wheezy.

I remember when I first saw him

painting, like a four year old, but the kind who isn’t dying.

I remember how he draped across my legs

asleep, like a hot air balloon with the fire turned off.

I remember when he searched me with his one visible

eye, like a tumorous tennis ball invaded where irises are meant to rest.

I remember how my soul stared at his fluttering red

jersey, like his chest cavity could completely collapse at exhale.

I remember when the constricting in my throat told me I loved

him, like the spade wasn’t already poised to pierce the ground.

I remember,

how do I stand up from this?

Patient Zero

It started with Gaëtan Dugas, a flight attendant who frequented

bath houses. Without going to jail, he was charged as “a sexually promiscuous

homosexual responsible for the mass spread of HIV in the United

States of America.” United, we imprisoned him. Now ‘patient zero’

is a term used to emphasize the significance of an idea, or a computer

virus with far-reaching impact. Do you think Gaëtan knew?

Typhoid Mary was formerly labeled an index case, the primary case.

Now we’ve reduced the first ill to zero. Mary was a cook; maybe she

was in a rush, customers out the door, she was usually very good

at slicing the beef but the blade slipped and the blood oozed and

she couldn’t decipher between the red of the cow and of her self

and so she put it on the grill, anyway. She was in a hurry, anyway.

And she didn’t know she was “an apparently healthy carrier,” anyway.

Do you think Mary knew? I doubt the baby, living in the orphanage,

knew his (maybe her, we tell the story from the perspective of “the focus

of infection” not of the baby in Soho, London with Cholera) nappy full

of Cholera was the source of six hundred and sixteen dead. Édgar Enrique Hernández

knew. There’s a bronze statue constructed for his commencing Swine Flu

and living to tell the tale. And what about the two-year-old in Guinea,

we call him a “little boy” and we “hesitate to name him patient zero”

because 3000 dead and 1.4 million to come seems like a lot for a toddler

to instigate. And what about us? Do we know the cataclysms we

cause? Does it take bronze statues for us to see the ripples?

Are we blind to our tsunamis?

and yet, and so

You passed us forest fires, tornados in snow, lakes above level.

And yet that revolution long ago brought us industrialized imaginings.

And so we are marching and we are saying thank you.

You started wars before we even knew to write a sentence with proper punctuation.

And yet that day scared us into ceaseless “where were you?” storytelling.

And so we are decrying and we are saying thank you.

You distinguished democrats from republicans until the difference was doubtful.

And yet the capacity to complain against government gives a new common ground.

And so we are muttering and we are saying thank you.

You pumped our seeds with carcinogens, stashed tumors at every turn.

And yet we eat avocados in December and capture quinoa creations on camera.

And so we are boycotting and we are saying thank you.

You created electrical engineering to destroy from a distance.

And yet we are tantalized by technologies just out of reach.

And so we are horrified and we are saying thank you.

You drove a debt so deep Death Valley shut down.

And yet we consume capitalist crazes as if the coins are never ending.

And so we are complaining and we are saying thank you.

You told us we would never witness lightning strike the same place twice.

And yet we watch now the trees splicing a future full of fissures.

And so we are weeping and we are saying thank you.

the ones I knew, died

Wellington was three,

with waning skin, empty eyes.

Too starved for food, died.

Then Evans was four,

blastomas blasting in eyes.

Chemo didn’t work, died.

Then Brittney was five,

finger spectacles on eyes.

“Dakuchapa”, died.

Then Kevin was two,

head full of fluid and eyes.

The painful kind, died.

Moses was/is four,

locked in rooms, abandoned eyes.

My child, not yet dead.

There are more, dying

Died. Children once held with eyes

& soul still joyful.

alikufa

Anita doesn’t cry, says she knew something was wrong, says she should’ve tried.

Bilha turns her face when the salt water wells, she’s the one who told us: Kevin. Alikufa.

Callie, they say, now we will go to see the body.

Don’t show how much your soul suffers, there are more children crying in front of you.

Eunice used to look outside and smile, seeing Kev-O giggling there to himself.

Faith’s mom, in the bed next to him, heard him scream all night long.

Graceful, she smiles, does not scream, at the one who let him die.

Hellen can’t stop sighing “oh, my god, oh my god.”

It isn’t fair, cries the American researcher (this is her first child death so we say I know).

Jane shakes her head, pushes her shoulders back, walks into the wards to work.
Kevin died, alikufa.

Lydia’s silence on this day sounds deeper than her tied tongue.

Miriam runs out of the morgue, she’s afraid to see his frozen body.

Nurse was conscious of his convulsing, never did go to him, didn’t even close his eyes.

Open, his eyes look shocked, aghast we weren’t there to hold him.

Paskalia swears she knew he was going to die with that fever he had.

Queen’s eyes follow movements across the wards, she’s abandoned but she knows.

Rebecca says “no, not Kev-O.”

Sarah rolls in the grass, giggles, wouldn’t hear even if we told her.

Thomas stays peaceful, only weighs three kilos, not enough to hold this.

Understand, I’m not callous, says Sarah Ellen…but children die here every day.

Vulnerability is easier when oceans stretch between us.

Wycliffe the mortician looks for an adult in the freezer, surprised when we say mtoto.

Xenophobia couldn’t keep me from mourning, I am no stranger to a child dying.

You will cry when I tell this story and I will awkwardly lie, tell you it gets easier.

Zika, alikufa.