I'm very grateful to David Lehman and Stacey Harwood for the opportunity to feature poems from The Awl (RIP) here on the BAP blog. The Awl's poetry section had a great run—nine years!—and I'm delighted that we can share some of the poets' work with more readers.
Up first is a poem by Nuar Alsadir. I love how it walks the line between imagery and abstraction, or rather, how it seems to declare that there is no line. And the exclamation point in the tenth couplet is one of the more complicated I've encountered. What does it want us to do? -- MB
when dark, is not that,
morning, but more like rain:
a sky of smog-stuck potatoes;
frustration without eyes.
The way I did nothing exhausted me:
I fed the wall,
ran water over my body
until it swirled down the drain.
On a determinable plane
I am undetermined,
on a moving train,
unable to find a seat.
The edge is what knows me,
the face half-carved off,
the gutter that gathers its objects
like knives, without connection,
here what is not there and vice versa.
I lie. I have seven jars of lies:
one for each day and the joy!
of repetition. Weeks redouble
and hold me still, anchors sprout
from my feet, stand in for will.
Desire is the lie I tell on Tuesday.
I tell it with my socks off
to be understood. The color
of intent is the crispness of bread;
whoever wants the heel
comes last to the table.
Nuar Alsadir is a poet and essayist. She is the author of the poetry collections Fourth Person Singular (2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Forward Prize for Best Collection; and More Shadow Than Bird (Salt Publishing, 2012). She works as a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York.
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