"Where I am Not" by Omar Sakr

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend September 4, 2019   Where I am Not   Omar Sakr

I ask the new migrant if he regrets leaving Russia. We have dispensed already with my ancestry. He says no. For a time, he was depressed. He found with every return he missed what he left behind. A constant state of this. Better to love by far where you are. He taps the steering wheel of his car, the hum of the engine an imperceptible tremble in us. When he isn't driving, he works tending to new trees. I've seen these saplings popping up all over the suburbs, tickling the bellies of bridges, the new rooted darlings of the State. The council spent a quarter mil on them & someone, he—Lilian—must ensure the dirt holds. Gentrification is climate-friendly now. I laugh and he laughs, and we eat the distance between histories. He checks on his buds daily. Are they okay? They are okay. They do not need him, but he speaks, and they listen or at least shake a leaf. What a world where you can live off land by loving it. If only we cared for each other this way. The council cares for their investment. The late greenery, that is, not Lilian, who shares his ride on the side. I wonder what it would cost to have men be tender to me regularly,  to be folded into his burly, to be left on the side of the road as he drove away, exhausted. Even my dreams of tenderness involve being used & I'm not sure who to blame: colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, queerness or poetry? Sorry, this is a commercial for the Kia Sportage now. This is a commercial for Lilian's thighs. He didn't ask for this and neither did I—how language drapes us together, how stories tongue each other in the back seat and the sky blurs out of frame. There are too many agonies to discuss here, and I am nearly returned. He has taken me all the way back, around the future flowering, back to where I am not, to the homes I keep investing in as harms. I should fill them with trees. Let the boughs cover the remembered boy, cowering under a mother, her raised weapon not the cane but the shattering within, let the green tear through the wall paper, let life replace memory. Lilian, I left you that day, and in the leaving, a love followed. Isn't that a wonder and a wound? Tell me which it is, I confess I mistake the two. I walk up the stairs to my old brick apartment where the peach tree reaches for the railing, a few blushing fruits poking through the bars, eager to brush my leg, to say linger, halt. I want to stop, to hold it for real, just once but I must wait until I am safe.            Copyright © 2019 Omar Sakr. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 4, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About This Poem   "I have been asked 'where do you come from?' a hundred thousand times—most often as a veiled attack—but also, as in this case, more softly, as an invitation to open. It felt so freeing to not answer the question in the poem, to instead flip it to focus on the driver, a newer migrant, and our shifting 'place' in this space. I love being driven, it is an act of surrender, and as someone without a license, this is one of the few ways I allow myself to be dominated. Are we ever in charge of our direction, our desires? Though I wrote this poem, I still can't tell you who was in the driver's seat, or if indeed I arrived home." —Omar Sakr   Omar Sakr was born and raised in Australia. His new book is The Lost Arabs (UQP, 2019). He is a doctoral candidate at Western Sydney University and lives in Sydney. Poetry by Sakr   The Lost Arabs (UPQ, 2019) "Aleppo" by Hala Alyan "In a Time of Peace" by Ilya Kaminsky "Prayer for My Immigrant Relatives" by Lory Bedikian September Guest Editor: Eduardo C. Corral   Thanks to Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine (Graywolf Press, 2020), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Corral about his curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. Your Support Makes Poem-a-Day Possible   Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. This free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on the weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. 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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