"Poetry" July/ August 2018

"Tablets IV" by Dunya Mikhail

selected stanzas

7

The map of Iraq looks like a mitten,
and so does the map of Michigan--
a match I made by chance.

8

If you can't save people,
at least don't hate them.

(p315)

21

Their stories didn't kill me
but I would die if I didn't
tell them to you.

 (p318)

23

We are not upset when
the grass dies. We know
it will come back
in a season or two.
The dead don't come back
but they appear every time
in the greenness of the grass.

(p319)

"Concerning the Necropolitical Landscape" by Christopher Soto p338-339
Probably not for use with students. But I thought this poem was beautiful and heartbreaking.

from "Under the Knife" by Krista Franklin

"Are you...?"

and to have to shatter their hopes of Dream Baby, and simultae-
ously begin the Emotional Labor of soothing their embarrassment
after hearing, "No." Because a woman with a swollen or distended
abdomen can only mean one thing. And that thing is always joyous
and awaited with excited anticipation. A woman with a distended
abdomen couldn't possibly be dealing on the daily with something
gone horribly awry. Couldn't possibly be engaged in an ongoing war
for her body, a custody battle for her own self. A woman's swollen
belly is everybody's Good News, everybody's Business.

So that's how I spent five years in my thirties: running around evad-
ing expectations my deceptive uterus induced in family, friends, and
rank fucking strangers.

(p389)