Art and shiny things…
I’ve spent a whole lifetime
trying to explain what homesickness feels like
inside my body, but when I open my mouth
I say your name.
Hannah Nahar , One Sentence Poems
This hit me right in the gut – it’s so rare as a third-culture kid to find someone who can put into words what you’ve been feeling your whole life..amazing.
I learned these strangers and their families
wandering and returning.
We once outraced a hail storm pulling
the bleaching laundry off the southern terrace.
One day at table our older son surprised
himself in accidental fluency
by asking aqua per favore, might I.
-from “The Days of August Leapt, One Over the Other,” by Judith Baumel, Barrow Street
(Climb in, climb out of the little black square) The village rises into form amidst the pines. Cows and goats stand unstunned in the forest. The Muslim and Christian quarters are made of flimsy wood and storage containers. Assemble, disassemble. There is a military technology fair in Orlando where you can purchase a village in a box. Then populate it: live inside it for a time. At the beginning of the exercise, the soldier students are told half-truths. They must stabilize who and why. While playing market, Nafeesa and Ralia cry out leblabi leblabi, to the soldiers. It is that roasted chickpea soup they sell in paper cones in the Middle East. “Win a- leblabi, u ashgid?” (Where is the leblabi and how much?), I ask. They are so shocked that they give me a Coke.
So in love with this gorgeous looping spiral of a poem from Nomi Stone.
Coffee and Irony 