America, sitting atop the night’s shoulders
singing in the faces of the hungry
deciphering the language of sadness
measuring the modulation of hatred in our children’s stomachs.
America, they’ve stolen your joy
destroying the muscles in your face
tied your heart to the vigil
where thousands of beings wander
inhabited by death,
a death we drag since men, from beyond,
buried his sword, before your name on this earth.
And the dirt
and the mold
and the mud
of our sun-threshed life.

America, get up America
shake off the dust and rust inside you.
America reborn
reborn America
American men,
American women and children
listen to the tremor rumbling from the Antilles
from that stone peak giving birth
to the voice of a child singing from a tiny island
from the hammering of the scaffold
whose shoulders are built from the blows of cackles
and courage
the pure orb of “American love.”

Listen
a new howl fills the sails of America
dragged by the enemies of man
capitalists,
proxies of the temples and Bibles
in the courts of peace and death
so the truth does not burn Bolivia into thirst,
strangled with a clay cord
the heir of the Inca’s
dead on an eternal bonfire
so the light won’t awaken the sleeping quetzal
atop the ruins of aboriginal silence,
to Chile, long and vibrant,
a spear pierced through the heart of an Araucanian;
to Central America
massacred by dynamited bananas,
to Venezuela
where the capital houses their steepest gallows
and the hosts of love are an impenetrable bastion.
To Brazil with large land and few people
adorning their rags with diamonds
tears on the soldiers lapels
while in Argentina and Paraguay
blood clots hang from the commanders medals
and from chimneys rise the stench of crushed meat.
Oh America!
Now without sail
without compass
bent from hunger
bitter fruit fallen
from a shadeless tree
under whose ruined structure
the American licks the back of sadness.

Oh America!
Piece of the dissected chant,
America, America,
reborn America
burdened men of America
light your bonfires
and march towards the light that guards history.

March
inheritors of blood
Colombian cowboys
with their enormous stomachs
where sunflowers bloom.
Natives of Peru
and Ecuador sleepy with coca
raise the ancient face of purity
and tell your secrets.

And you, Puerto Rico
nailed to the jaws of hatred
small lump of sugar plagued by vermin
slow assassination 
crushed between masses of metal and glass.
Oh Puerto Rico
I love you more than any other American homeland
because you permanently inhabit the cry
I love you
I love you
I love you from Santo Domingo
dismembered corpse
shout parted in two
but born of a single throat
from a single anguish,
alone.

Oh America
piece of the dissected chant
with a luminous morning
built by the guerillas of love
who have their widest smile in Cuba.

Oh America
for you so many men fight
for you they die
how much love must be housed
to die for you
for an America not yet born
and won’t be for some time.
Americans of the new gospel
hold in your hands
our heart’s clamor
raise high our cry
tighten the knots that tie us to tenderness
the infant dawn of a smile
tied with your veins
wet with your blood
purified by your cry.

Americans of the new gospel
raise high our cry
so it survives the flood
because it will give birth to generations of happiness
an ample mankind
large as the smile of the proletarian sunrise
forever seedlings of vigor
of spilled love
while life edifies
over the debris of a past life.

Americans of 1963, of this century
evangelizers of the new world
raise your heads
raise them high
to see from afar this land that constitutes our future.
With our remains:
with our hands and bones
with our organs,
with all our being,
with this burdened life,
built to survive,
see it
and do not faint
because we are tomorrow’s fire
the eternal youth
the gesture of those who love
giving everything
taking everything
for this life submerged in your voices.

 

Your torn white shirt lies
            drying on the anchor.
In the hush of my cheek
            I feel your gypsy hair, while husky
voices echo across the water
            and through night’s rusting gear.
Palms timidly touch
            the still aching secret scars.
Dawn breaks, and in its light
            I can see your heart in your eyes,
waiting for me like treasure received…
            O dawn – of boundless brutality and beauty!

 

WHEN MEEK & THUNDEROUS

 

When meek & thunderous
spring makes its mooring
& the heart wanes in wax,
honeycomb homilies
flit from fin to wing
of migrant fish & birds
wearing whispers of your name;
we imagine you, because it’s true,
your destination, too, is mystery.

 

 

 

 

OH IN ITALY A MEMORY

 

Oh in Italy a memory of the women
who turtledove-strut the windowsills
suddenly thresh their thighs
pulverizing poppies in secret
red petals of their Saracen dresses
fluttering like lustful oriflamme
in defense of the footsteps scrawled
over the island’s wind-worn cobbles.

 

Is a path one travels alone also a road? 
The radish flower has bloomed
along a hidden path
after others have been planted. 
In the swamp, the radish flower has bloomed
without a flag,
without a flagpole,
its heart coming alone, 
late spring arriving with only its body.
Woo woo. Like a Molotov Cocktail,
I bloomed late, among the radish flowers.
Roads ahead and behind are blocked by blue barricades of grass and trees,
at the place of the sacred late spring.
I lived a few breathless days
along a road going alone.
Is the road no one walks
a road too?
My yellow pollen 
going somewhere in late spring.

“Untitled” Lucía nursed her anguish for thirty-six years (she didn’t know sadness is an animal that doesn’t understand flattery). There are no pictures of her: she was afraid of the eye in the camera lens, since it was said it could bewitch a soul and make feet clumsy on cliffs. Everything about her is a fable—she could have had six fingers, a third eye, been bald and missing teeth. Or, as some say, she could have been more beautiful than a quiet death—no evidence exists to disprove it.  They say she got up and changed the curtains, and her hair was enough to make you love her. They say she was silent as water that watches over dreams of the drowned and her dresses seemed to anchor her to the journey she started as a child. They say she emptied her glass, listened to what her legs demanded. They say the animal praised her, caressed her, in return. I was almost named Lucía. Lucía was my grandmother. “Untitled” A dream: the sea, a port, perhaps the same one where my letters don’t arrive because I don’t know its name. A tiger comes towards me with the remains of a blue deeper than the white-water’s whisper. A tiger carrying a drowned girl’s nostalgia on its fur. A tiger without hunger, waiting to see in my eyes the chains and fire he confuses for home.  I approach, and maybe the fear of the salt waves crystallizing or the clouds cacophony make my movements small. I approach, and suddenly I know, by instinct: the tigers are oil paints of water, streaked with fury, mirrors that confess before other tigers.

 

We were born like gold
on this sparkling brown land.

It fell, ringing
from the mouth of an Uyghur angel,
its music sunk into our ears.
Oh, mother tongue,
we became wanderers,
and have moved far from your horizons.

Opium poppies
bring the scent of the seas,
thoughts kept moist for a while. 

I have left the radio on.
It speaks
in the wind.

Cool orchards
Oil, sandy mountains
A group of people whose colours have drained,
dead still cities and winter pastures.
I drank coffee
and cried.

The ocean waves entered my home. 

 

A note on Adil Tuniyaz by Munawwar Abdulla

The current whereabouts of Adil Tuniyaz is unknown. Most likely, he is in a jail in Urumchi, the capital of occupied East Turkistan, in Xinjiang, China. 

Adil Tuniyaz, his wife Nezire Muhammad, eldest son Imran, and father-in-law Muhammad Salih Hajim, were all arrested in December 2017 during the Chinese government’s mass incarceration campaign that displaced millions of Uyghurs into re-education camps, prisons, and forced labor factories. The official charges for Tuniyaz and his family’s arrests were “promoting terrorism and religious extremism”. Multiple sources have speculated that the family were detained for their work translating religious texts such as Islamic hadiths into Uyghur. Muhammad Salih Hajim was a prominent religious scholar who was credited with being the first to translate the Quran (with permission from the government). He was confirmed to have died in a re-education camp in January 2018. It is difficult to know the current status of the rest of the incarcerated family.

China has denied the existence of “re-education” camps, then rebranded them as vocational training centers, then defended them as deradicalization training, and now claims that they have closed. Still, the number of prison sentences have skyrocketed, and many of those camps have always been attached to forced labor factories. People from every age group, religion, career, or academic background were targeted with no opportunity to ask for evidence for arrest or appeal for release. 

Along with the crackdown on bodies, there has been a crackdown on thought. Knowledge. Language. Many writers, artists, publishers, even literature and anthropology professors, have been given long prison sentences for vague reasons with no trial. Tuniyaz’s cohort of modernist poets included Perhat Tursun, a controversial and secular writer who is now serving 16 years in prison after being arrested in January 2018 for unknown reasons. Another is Tahir Hamut, who managed to escape to the US and write about his harrowing experiences as an artist navigating state control in his book Waiting to Be Arrested at Night (2023). 

While we wait to hear of Adil Tuniyaz’s fate, it feels important to share his old poetry. We sink into the softness of his longing for familiar sounds and horizons while in a foreign land. We think of his connection to identity and the way he transposes Islamic mystic elements onto Uyghur cultural motifs. I marvel at the scents and melodies he infuses into his poems. And I note the irony of translating a poem called Mother Tongue, and wonder if I have become unanchored like him, and maybe I should drink coffee, and maybe I should cry.

Today I did not comb my hair
I didn’t even look in the mirror
My kitchen greeted me icily
The walls eyed each other, but didn’t look at me
I wasn’t worth it to those four walls
It’s hilarious that my cat was scared of me
Is my appearance uglier than a cat
Is it so important to dress up
How did I get to this thought
To carry on for a day like I am not living
Doing whatever that comes to mind
To think like those who have gone mad

Firstly, I boiled the coffee in a saucepan
then added a touch of vinegar

I washed my socks in the dishwasher
Found holes in four places
tossed and turned it
and sensed that it was still sound

I tried calling my daughter mum
Can you believe she replied, yes my daughter
I will remember that my mother is also my daughter

I hesitated when it was my husband’s turn
because sometimes I do not recognise him
He has this one look
where my insides end up on my outside
That is the way I am tested
I will try calling him by another name
Wallander, I called, staring at him
Wallander is a Swedish inspector
He didn’t respond, so I repeated, Wallander
Your case is fairly complicated, huh
If we bear it for a day it will unravel itself
A gourd with no water will wear holes in itself from dryness
So he said, looking at himself
Carefully combing my unkept hair
I will remember my husband really is Wallander

The litterfall is my red carpet
The trees sway and flirt
On one foot I wear a boot, on the other a slipper
I wailed loudly in my Uyghur tongue
The Ili roads are winding, winding
On those winding roads, a pair of skylarks sing plaintive
Mournful skylark
I will remember the magnanimity of the trees and litterfall 

I came upon a gaunt woman
She froze upon seeing me
then backed away slowly
barely holding back a laugh
Between the two of us one of us is crazy
I know I am faking crazy
If she is also faking crazy
it’s clear then we are both crazy

After the gaunt woman
I arrived upon a four-way intersection
Green, yellow, and red lights
were brushing the road’s pressure points
Ah the highest degree of mania
It is not at all like the imagination
The lights stand around
shining their eyes
There is only colour here
The colour yellow is calm
How mystical is the red
How loving is the green 
Some people would say I was calm
when they became toothless snakes and bit me
They would say I was a loving woman
when they hid the sun behind their hems
They would say I was a mystical woman
when I became crazy like this

Again a green light
On yellow we prepare
Red summons
I raised my right leg
I raised it and
I saw a woman stretched out on the ground
Her white hair uncombed
On her right foot a boot, on her left a slipper
Mournful and restless
Oh, this crazy, whining woman
said the gaunt woman
whispering
Oh, this lunatic woman
said the cat
muttering
The woman lying on the floor looked like me
but was not me
The green light was still on
I will remember the countenance of the colour green

I recalled all my memories
My vinegar flavoured coffee
My holey socks
My daughter mother
Wallander
My litterfall
My madness
These are all my green lights

 

at the base

no one quite knew how late it was
when it was too late: i came back
a breeze took my hand, the courtyard

recognized me, as always, without waking
i picked out the old names on the name plates
bein, puhahn, henke, brumm, i let them dry

no clothespins on the clothesline
where there was a puddle, no longer a puddle
where no trees stood, there stood trees

the hedge conversed with me, softly, a shadow
under the ping pong table, only the lifespan of the streetlights
seemed longer than an afternoon: mr. schatta

has slept in the graveyard for twenty-five years
for twenty-five years i have been asleep too
no one quite knows how late it is, when it is too late

benches without backrests, as always deli-counter light
the small flakes on my lips, that scrap of skin
i push around at the base of my tongue, i am.

after the conversations

it is as if your furniture had decided
on its own where it would like to stand
a circumspect silence of wood

the bed in its corner in the hall
the bookshelves, their load
mystery novels, political texts

there is nostalgia for plastic
bags near the closet i catch
a scent, harsh in its sweetness

wallpaper flakes away here and there
from the walls, where did the brownish stain
on the ceiling come from, on the dresser

a framed photo of my childhood
friends, they are still looking at you
silent and dusty: this is how one grows old.

 

 

scorpion or spider

 

you’re saying something about matter and dark space
and your arms spread out wide, as if you wanted
to cradle a zeppelin, stars, electrodes

voices approach, grow distant, monitors
something hisses, your lungs, and these white
machines, seductively cold, know almost everything

about you, cables, hoses, the door hangs lightly
on its hinges on a glowing hot sunday
afternoon dust motes float in the air like bird

feathers on water…we follow them
as they fall, flakes of skin fall
we do not hear the steps in the hall

until we see shoes, an animal in my back
scorpion or spider, marks the break: i could not
find a container for the teeth, i’m sorry, nor

for the toothbrush, the comb, there are more hand
kerchiefs in the bag, the phone and your reading glasses
two shirts, socks, some pairs of underpants.

 

 

Sahel! Sa(y) Hel(lo) Mother earth Earth mother We have fallen to earth  The man from Galilee keeps mum A surge in perils, tsunamis The gods are seeing red The Sahel rises in you, in me The Red Sea boils in you, in me Nunavut is melting in you, in me No taller than a pygmy, Annapurna Grazes the asphalt head down Ashamed and obstinate snail The earth the sea Earth mother The world is dying The man from Galilee awakens His lips come alive Attempt to surmount ramparts The profound prayer erupts from the earth To place a bit of green Onto our stony hearts In India an old legend persists It says the man from Galilee escaped crucifixion And spent his last seven years in Kashmir Outside my mouth my words are already dead Memory’s a graveyard The lute player bursts into lament He sings of the wandering caravan driver who didn’t  Bring enough food for his journey Not one voice answered his wailing The seed of his chant grew old wrinkles  Before you could say He was there, he was gone. What remains of our oldest forebears the reptiles Who stretched themselves out to escape the primordial silt Some folds, some features legible on the retina brain We’ve been in on this for ages but don’t breathe a word

Every Being Is Unique I’m a sponge And I gorge myself on spring Wherever I go my eyes catch the inhalation of daffodils Heaven is on earth and nowhere else Through strange reasoning we refuse to welcome it My legs insist that I sit You’re getting too old, son Settle down here and write Name the dawn once again Jot down in your notepad  The freshly fallen stars Sketch the jowls of love on your sweetheart’s breast Inscribe in your notebook these expressions living soul wandering time without any fuss skin of light  in lucidity there is light (lux) four small pieces of bread make a meal The sun opens the inkwell to the day The light steps over the same threshold every time Shaking the edifice of night The cock’s crow The dawn’s smile The mischievous grain of sand  That inexorably topples the big hourglass As a child one sometimes confides Their last requests on the spot Promising to be The faithful shadow of the blossoming almond tree Every being is unique In search of their epic word

 

first his breathing then his pupils

I watch his mouth

its furrows its swells

slight circle of his irises

the black hole a tube

he sees me

impulsion

an implicit programmatics

ascension

the facades the borough

remanence of Rio 

a yard a garden

the staircase

winding

its gradations

compelling

the maples

alongside

the false acacias

figuration of caresses

swirled rumour of a fountain 

faint sound

metallic taste of the city

a magnetism

from palate to nostrils

infra-resonance

warm silver

low table

the flakes of fish

air under the studio ceiling 

a loge

we make acquaintance

summer solstice alters the sky

we deflect curiosity by foreseeing questions 

private

spheres

spontaneous revelation

the ineffable

freshness of a stream

are we already naked

bared

we expose ourselves

fluidity

gravity

propensity

the charm

the intimacy

premise of a banquet

Hephaistos

Aristophanes

vestiges dionysiae vertiges

Empedocles

happiness

tenor of futures put to the test

at ease

we name

great loves

inflections

decades

les fidélités

promises made

offenses injuries miracles

the enduring friendships

gaie santé

current genealogy

virtual group portrait

numerous

already

he stands up

draughts

the bamboo imbibe their fill of rainwater

transfer of delectation

euphoria

temptation reparation

congruency

catalysis

paradoxical privilege

incursion

permissiveness

we draw close

to kiss

convergence