Agitated Air [Months pass. A year. You’re here still]

Months pass. A year. You’re here still
haunting what we had, scratching
the phantom limb. Again’s not

some retrievable rush, it’s what
you can hope for: revolution
or another poem. The staircase
home’s a tragic shape.

All we can do is spiral,
describe the loops and watch
the epicentre dim.

What’s left? A bowl of vapour.
Questions. Lights. A love that made you
see things.

Yasmine Seale, a writer, translator, printmaker, and artist, was born in London in 1989.

Among Seale’s translations from Arabic are Something Evergreen Called Life (Action Books, 2022), a collection of poems by the Sudanese writer and activist Rania Mamoun, and The Annotated Arabian Nights (W. W. Norton, 2021), described by The New Yorker as “an electric new translation.” Seale is the coauthor of Agitated Air (Tenement Press, 2022), a collaboration with the translator Robin Moger, responding to the work of the poet and metaphysician Ibn Arabi.

About Yasmine Seale

Themes

Loss

Love

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Agitated Air [by one bird late chanting]

(by one bird
late chanting)
(if bird is knowing
not naming)
(how lovers)
(first thing
were fastening)
(then nothing)
(if hell is watching
their fading)
(if night is naming
not finding)
(if wind is
their breathing)
(is something)

(if night is
but cloaking)
(world never
not shining)
(if river is not
stopping
crying not crossing)

Yasmine Seale

2022

Agitated Air [Branches stoop like fathers down to cheeks digressively]

Branches stoop like fathers down to cheeks digressively.
So locks, so chute of knots & pliant waves hang fluently.
Boldness trails along the floor, lies under folds alluringly.
Loveliness denied finds you accustomed & untested shyly.
Lips unlock, loose hiccups, purse & soak superdeliciously.
Stripped, expanses slide to dips, then billow incomparably.
Conversation’s witchery now stirs, now stills magnetically.
Charms to hold a faithful heart in chains surface sparingly.

Yasmine Seale

2022

Agitated Air [what it would mean to move]

what would it mean to move
out of your orbit into what
long night no fun being
locked here bright face always
turned to your indifference

how could I have known it would
be hard to live on radiance alone

but if I must let me not want
more than this field this tender to
& fro in equal time let it do

Yasmine Seale

2022

Poems

Agitated Air [Months pass. A year. You’re here still]

More by this poet

Agitated Air [by one bird late chanting]

Agitated Air [Branches stoop like fathers down to cheeks digressively]

Agitated Air [what it would mean to move]

Poems

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Agitated Air [Months pass. A year. You’re here still]

More by this poet

Agitated Air [by one bird late chanting]

Agitated Air [Branches stoop like fathers down to cheeks digressively]

Agitated Air [what it would mean to move]

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