Poetry
To Mandela
after A. Van Jordan
Mandela (man-del-a). v. [Xhosa org. South Africa.] 1) the action of getting bigger with every year in prison as in, you send us to Robben Island and we will mandela a university behind these walls and yes I can sneak a 800 page memoir out of prison, one toilet paper sheet at a time. 2) to sing the national anthem (Nkosi Sikeleli Afrika) in three languages, as in to mandela a people’s language is to know their culture. 3) to defeat one’s opponent without dishonoring them, as in he mandelas de Klerk all the way to the Nobel Prize. 4) to adorn oneself in father love, as in my son died of AIDS, no shame in the telling. 5) to dance to Hugh Masekela’s solitary trumpet. See also: Ken Saro-Wiwa, Aung San Suu Kyi, Winnifred Mandela. Ant: George Bush, Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier.
Published in Harvard Review, 2008
Becky Thompson reads from her book, Zero is the Whole I Fall into at Night
Sea Shares Salt LESVOS, GREECE
Before light
Four in the morning,
a buzzing alerts me to the sea,
scanning for a black raft
until heads pop up,
their arms opening,
as my waving reaches theirs.
Hungry rocks eat the bottom
of their raft, as a father
lifts his newborn to Allah
Swing Sets LESVOS, GREECE
When my sister was six
and I was eight
she took apart the swing set
on Christmas day
with the wrenches from the tool box
we got for a present
a memory that sidles up to me
as Syrian children
I am walking with
up a mountain pass
run to a swing set in the front
