Elmaz Abinader's Blog
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Apr.25.2012
you are not accountable
to the life of your tribe
the breath of your planet..
North American Time, Adrienne Rich
falling into the ocean
the town he grew up in is falling...
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Apr.22.2012
So we’re riding down the highway, about to make a turn onto my friend’s exit ramp. Cones are lining the road because some work is being done. My friend and I note this and say the obligatory “it’s about time.” As we curl around, we see road equipment in the BART parking lot; she makes a comment...
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Apr.19.2012
she walked on knives to gain a voice
I was There, Axel, Adrienne Rich
The...
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Apr.15.2012
All is matter, of course, matter-of-course…/
From Sickbed Shores, Adrienne Rich
while we’re on this road
today the sign will be the white flower fallen from the bush
the edges brown one side wilted
or perhaps
the child pointing at the branch sticking out
like a dragon’s neck, wood of...
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Apr.14.2012
I was raised with ritual. From the first trickle of Catholic water on my head to the planting calendar for our garden, to the march from period to period in class, I knew where my body would be at what time of the day, week, year and what I would be doing.
This wasn’t unlike many childhoods that...
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Apr.09.2012
Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.
What Kind of Times are These, Adrienne Rich
rhetoric the woods
the spaces between the trees fragment
the sun blades knifing the forest, a slender...
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Apr.08.2012
Human impatience trips you as you run;
Stand still and you must lie.
It is the grass that cuts the mower down;
It is the cloud that swallows up the sky.
Adrienne Rich, Rural Reflections
Not So
I use the word Ironic more than any other adjective--
my constant awe of the unexpected,...
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Apr.07.2012
A conversation begins
with a lie. and each
speaker of the so-called common language feels
the ice-floe split, the drift apart
as if powerless, as if up against
a force of nature
A poem can begin
with a lie. And be torn up.
Adrienne Rich, Cartographies of...
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Apr.05.2012
Take the word
of my pulse, loving and ordinary
From Implosions, Adrienne Rich
For Anthony
We cannot divulge secrets for there are none--
no formula, format or sense of organization.
Our conversations are ordinary in the way of
keeping a house secure, a life safe. We gather at the...
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Apr.04.2012
I know inside my eyelids
and underneath my skin
from Burning Oneself Out, Adrienne Rich
Save Yourself; Remember Nothing
Memory is heavy: stones on the eyes, a flattening the light to dark brown
A blink shutters the thing we didn't mean to see or remember but hangs a sty in every...
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Apr.02.2012
In The Throat
It was an old theme even for me:/
Language cannot do everything-
Cartographies of Silence, Adrienne Rich
if I could speak
the hyphen making space between the word and what it needs
then I could learn how this body can inhabit two worlds-- an...
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Apr.02.2012
I. Walking the Dog
Most of the other folks walking dogs turn left along the packed trail after the bridge; I forge ahead along the tiny path that looks like compression in the grass. Brewster bounds ahead running to me and then off to the dogs on the other side to try to get a pick up run....
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Apr.01.2012
Arsenal
I am bombarded yet I stand (Adrienne Rich, from Planetarium)
We don’t need thunder, anger or the conversion of galaxies to withstand --
if anything we are armed with ploughs, rakes,...
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Mar.22.2012
In the weird pre-morning where my mind is awake and my body stays immobile, I flash images of Trayvon Martin—the latest victim of racist vigilantism that has grown in this country since our government’s aggression has escalated in the last two decades. Unless you are confused—these are...
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Mar.15.2012
I'm learning, kind of on the job, the short cuts associated with texting. LIke many, these abbreviated usages are working their way into my writing and i find myself using "thru" "u r" and 4 without reflecting that the platform i'm working on is not a small screen. As a matter of fact, languages...
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About Elmaz
Elmaz's books, Children of the Roojme, a Family's Journey from Lebanon and In The Country of My Dreams... , as well as her play, Country of Origin, illustrate personal lives of Arabs and Arab Americans negotiating hostile terrain, cultural polarities,...
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