(Being an Occasional Poem for All Q&As Henceforth)For Jamal Cyrus and Tomás Morin, and all kith who make do to make work
“Do you also make work that isn’t political?”
I mean, do we make work
about where and when we were
raised: the three-whistle corner store
the empty coke bottle trill
the nickname that doesn’t nick us
as we blow through customs
with a toothpick smile
and hell-no eyes, sweet fools
greasing the bike chains
for this day, always saying
someone better fix this street
light? Do we flicker at night
when the kids are sleeping
dim, bright, dim, bright, do we?
Do we, at times, make work
about who breaks the news
to us at breakfast and how the syrup
she’s holding is now trembling, how
she’s beating, beating, beating
what no one can now eat, the mouth
fumbling for what no one
can now say? Do we make it
work with mirrors held
to the bottom of lakes, with combs
pulled through palms, with thumbs
flipping the bills, with two bags
and three names
at the border?
I mean, do we make work
about the road that crackles
with sirens or about Dad’s hydrangeas
which came up again that summer
violet clouds of bruises and pinker
than the Hubba Bubba we were popping
so loud, no one could stand us
but we grinned and grinned because
any air left in us meant
we could still answer
years later
a question like this?
Copyright © 2024 by Divya Victor. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 3, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
for Yannis Ritsos
On Makronissos did he dream of guitars
& the birds that fell asleep in his pockets
at home who became insomniacs
on the prison island the Americans invented
Makronissos / designed to extirpate
his communist cyclamen & his communist love
for the teenagers shot from the roof of the parliament
when the British switched sides & trained the police
who’d killed for the Germans the day before
love for the farmers who laughed
at Churchill’s idea of a king
love for the village network of whispers
for how villagers treated all manner of conquerors
for the light & the waves he knew from his first day
chewing the chains postwar empire was reforming
If you keep resisting demokratia
said the Americans
We can make it so island for you
I’ve dislocated my soul, could you pop it back in
It hurts so much I can’t help but sing
Is that what he said to the 11,999
Greeks he was islanded with
& to the cyclamen & the light & the waves
the stones he had to carry & break
the brambles & the sand
the moon that never changed allegiances
or signed a declaration of repentance
& did he say that to poetry
Makronissos / The island to manufacture silence
Makronisiotika / The poems he made there
Maybe you’ve seen other versions of this
the Battalionists vs. the communists
among them the poets
who could be found
tipping their heads back to see the gulls
drinking their voices as if it were language
putting banned words in bottles to bury
& remembering where
for the days someone might listen again
Copyright © 2024 by Suzanne Gardinier. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 10, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.