Art and poetry July 2024

^{Disabled is not a bad word / Sara Quinn}

The Farmer

If I stand on the top of my bunk

My chin just reaches the top of my

cells windows ledge.

I stare out at the ominous guard tower,

sky high fencing topped with spool after

spool of razor wire, and dirty prison walls.

But just past all of that, across the road

is a farmhouse. With its rolling hills, golden

field, and gloriously green trees I become envious.

Just look at all he has!

Then I think for a moment longer

and the envy disappears. For one day I will leave here

and my view will change. But for the farmer,

everyday he looks out his window, he will see,

that ominous guard tower, sky high fencing

topped with spool after spool of razor wire,

and those dirty prison walls.

—S.E. Canella (written in seg)

Washington State Penitentiary

Carob Tree

I want to talk with you. It’s been a while
since anyone’s talked with me, no one around
says to me the things I say to you
when I’m sleepwalking.
For example, yesterday at 3AM the soldiers rained
tear gas bombs on us, ten workers
who crammed in a walk-in refrigerator for produce.
And the gas, like crude oil
that spilled into sea,
a forest fire that occupied all the air.

The carob tree was uprooted.
I still don’t know what you’re like
when you catch the flu.
Tomatoes are cheap this season
and the farmers are sad.
I’ve saved the best tomatoes for you.
As for the first thing I do when I wake up
I check the weather.
Weather enthusiasts in Palestine, like followers
of skincare products on Instagram,
are many.

And one more thing, since you’re not here:
do you like eggplant?

— Tariq Alarabi
Poems from Palestine

Translated by Fady Joudah
 
Read more at:
thebaffler.com/logical-revolts/poems-from-palestine

Everybody poems.

Lleno de ilusiones, corriendo para no perder la partida, en mi caja había unas cuantas pilchas y alas, si, enormes alas que me llevarían a cualquier lugar, adonde yo quisiera llegar. Nunca pensé en aprender la ruta de vuelta a Chile, las mismas grandes alas me regresaría, pero hoy pienso que no pensaba en regresar, para que. Hoy, años más tarde y lejos de donde salí, muy lejos en la distancia y en el tiempo mis alas se han vuelto pesadas y grandes, enormes, tan grandes que sus agudas y fuertes puntas se fueron enterando y transformando en raíces, crié raíces en una tierra ajena, ya no puedo volar, ya no puedo regresar. Hoy mis hijos me hablan de volar.

Full of hopes, running to not lose the start, in my box a few clothes and wings, yes, huge wings that would take me anywhere, wherever I wanted to go. I never thought about learning the route back to Chile, the same great wings would return me, but today I think that I didn't think about returning, so why? Today, years later and far from where I came from, very far in the distance and in time, my wings have become heavy and big, enormous, so big that their sharp and strong tips were buried and transformed into roots, I grew roots in a foreign land, I can no longer fly, I can no longer return. Today my children talk to me about flying.

—
Alex Ginieis

Nucleo. Mataletras. (Nucleus. Wordkiller.)

Aveces, cierro los ojos y en mis meditaciones puedo observar de mi como pasa normalmente en la naturaleza una semilla que germina de mi pecho para convertirse en retoño, endurecer como árbol y morir en invierno, me veo con la misma fórmula que alimenta tanto su tallo como mi alma, es la luz un espectro superior que visto desde abajo se convierte en corona, esa luz que buscamos alcanzar con el crecer de los años.


Qué tan alto se debe ser? Sabemos que eso es imposible, pero que se debe pensar en que es posible todo cuando lo vemos desde adentro, no desde el inicio, más bien en el núcleo.

Sometimes, I close my eyes, and in my meditations, I can observe how, just like in nature, a seed germinates from my chest to become a sprout, harden like a tree, and die in winter. I see myself with the same formula that nourishes both its stem and my soul. It is light, a superior spectrum that, seen from below, turns into a crown, that light we seek to reach as we grow older.

How high should one be? We know that it is impossible, but we must think that everything is possible when we see it from within, not from the beginning, but rather from the nucleus.


—Ulises Navarro