"The Soldier’s Dream" by Duriel E. Harris

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend February 28, 2018   The Soldier's Dream   Duriel E. Harris

France promises to increase military assistance to Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger as they join forces to battle Boko Haram and the extremists' campaign across the region's borders. —reported in "'Seven-year-old girl' kills herself and five others in Nigeria suicide bombing,"  The Guardian, February 22, 2015    The child has one body and five bodies it holds: the body of eyes, the body of ears, the scent body, the body of tongues, the tactile body of singed hairs. Seedless, the one body is stiff and shrouded in white netting. The child has one body and five black stones, tiny fists with gold wrists pinned over her heart. The child has one body and five small bags of salt pinned to the band round her waist, five glass rattles braided into her hair. The coarse blue salt and jet charms offer protection. The rattles ward off trouble. She stares behind me into the future. She hovers in the air. Around her, the gilded pages of a book rise and fall amid mottled feathers, dirt, and dry leaves. The dirt colors everything red.                Copyright © 2018 Duriel E. Harris. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "'The Soldier's Dream' is part of an ongoing project taking up withness as a primary mode of engagement, exploration, and witness. I began its composition meditating on the phrase 'The child has one body / and five' from Lisa Fishman's poem 'Oscura Selva' (from The Happiness Experiment, Ahsahta Press, 2007), an allusion to Dante's Divine Comedy, as well as images of the last moments in the lives of Nigerian children kidnapped by Boko Haram. After incorporating that phrase into the poem, I found myself returning to De Profundis, or Psalm 130, (traditionally recited as a prayer for the sick, sung in commemoration of the dead, and uttered as an expression of sorrow) and the energy and promise inherent in birth and youth. I found myself asking: What is required to keep the peace? Who among us journeys to paradise?" —Duriel E. Harris   Duriel E. Harris is the author of three poetry collections, including her most recent, No Dictionary of a Living Tongue (Nightboat Books, 2017). Harris is an associate professor of English in the graduate creative writing program at Illinois State University and the editor of Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. She lives in Chicago.     Photo credit: Gina Sandrzyk Poetry by Harris   No Dictionary of a Living Tongue (Nightboat Books, 2017) "Testimony" by Hafizah Geter "Firing Squad" by Ilya Kaminsky "@ the Crossroads—A Sudden American Poem" by Juan Felipe Herrera February Guest Editor: Dawn Lundy Martin   Thanks to Dawn Lundy Martin, author of Good Stock Strange Blood (Coffee House Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about Martin and our other guest editors for the year. Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038

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