#rewa zeinati

[missedstations]

"The last day on earth" - Rewa Zeinati

                   will be short. It will be quick. The car engines will suck back their toxic fumes. The shepherds will put down their sticks. The phones will ring all at once and then all at once will stop ringing and no one will pick up. Everyone will be sitting on something. A flat rock. A dirty pavement. The edge of a ruffled bed. Everyone will be looking to the left. Kitchens will smell of burned sage and soldiers will abandon their sleeves to the heat of a broken field. The field will cover the dead with daisies and the desert will turn into a single grain of salt. Everyone will be thirsty. A child will switch off the TV. A river will remember itself. Women will run outside on younger feet and lovers will call their lovers to the window to show them how all the barbed wires had turned into threads of wind. Everyone will be looking at what's left. And you and I might talk again on the last day on earth. You might still have something to say to me. You might still want to show me how much I was wrong.

[soracities]

My aunt says a woman is like the soil, like the land, el maraa mitil el ard giving back despite the pounding of army boots and the blue fists of men on our skin. Giving back in orange groves and children even though her body couldn’t her land lost eighteen and forced to walk the length of exile to get here.

Rewa Zeinati, from ‘Rooms’, pub. in Guernica

[guernicamag]

Visit Original Link

Rooms

We used to think that refugees / were of one kind / and we never knew / that we were too.

Poetry by Rewa Zeinati

https://www.guernicamag.com/rooms/

[6peaches]

Rewa Zeinati - The last day on earth

will be short. It will be quick. The car engines will suck back their toxic fumes. The shepherds will put down their sticks. The phones will ring all at once and then all at once will stop ringing and no one will pick up. Everyone will be sitting on something. A flat rock. A dirty pavement. The edge of a ruffled bed. Everyone will be looking to the left. Kitchens will smell of burned sage and soldiers will abandon their sleeves to the heat of a broken field. The field will cover the dead with daisies and the desert will turn into a single grain of salt. Everyone will be thirsty. A child will switch off the TV. A river will remember itself. Women will run outside on younger feet and lovers will call their lovers to the window to show them how all the barbed wires had turned into threads of wind. Everyone will be looking at what’s left. And you and I might talk again on the last day on earth. You might still have something to say to me. You might still want to show me how much I was wrong.

[translations2]

기억나지 않는다, 레와 제이나티

We Call to the Eye & the Night

https://aaww.org/i-dont-remember/

i don’t remember

- Rewa Zeinati

if we kept any plants.

if we fussed over them

like new parents

worried that the water

wasn’t enough or the sun.

i remember a single window

was all we needed of light

and when we moved again

a small wooden balcony looked out

to a pitch black ocean of grass

and the half-radiance of fireflies.

below us the trees lined

the street like checkpoints

and every year their leaves would steal

a little more color off our mouths/

our young hair/ and our hands

were young too/ we dreamed

of a garden and a two-story house/

we dreamed of children

or maybe we were told to/

we talked of returning to the old city

of mild winters/ curved sky and stray

cats was the way we remembered it/

imagined going back there to the same

flight of early stairs where we first met

to meet again/ or never meet.

-

기억나지 않는다

- 레와 제이나티

우리가 식물을 키웠는지.

막 부모가 된 사람들처럼

식물을 두고 소란을 피웠는지

물이 충분하지 않다며

햇빛이 충분하지 않다며.

나는 기억한다 우리에게 필요한 빛은

단지 창문 하나만큼의 빛

우리가 또 이사를 했을 때

작은 나무 발코니에서 내다볼 수 있었다

칠흑같은 잔디의 바다와

반딧불이의 어슴푸레한 불빛을.

우리 아래 나무들은

국경의 검문소처럼 거리에 늘어서고

그 이파리들은 매년 우리들 입에서

조금씩 더 많은 색깔을 훔쳐갔다 /

우리의 어린 머리칼 / 우리의 손도

어렸지 / 우리는 꿈꿨다

정원과 이층집을 /

우리는 아이들을 갖기를 꿈꿨다

어쩌면 누군가 우리에게 그렇게 꿈꾸라고 했겠지 /

우리는 옛 도시로 돌아가자는 이야기를 하곤 했다

포근한 겨울의 도시 / 구불구불한 하늘과 떠돌이

고양이들이 우리가 도시를 기억하는 방식이었다 /

우리가 처음 만난 그 계단으로

돌아가는 일을 상상하는 방식이었다

다시 만나기 위해 / 아니면 다시는 만나지 않기 위해.

[hope-esperanza-espoir]

What We Will Tell

-Rewa Zeinati

"What We Will Tell" by Rewa Zeinati

from Natural Bridge

We’ll tell them we tried. We told stories and wrote poems and were

sometimes ignored. We filled the classrooms with manifestos and

sex. We filled the classrooms with questions. We’ll tell them we rode

buses from the villages all the way to the city and back. We burned

candles in church and then we burned down the church. We’ll tell

them we did not all want to believe in the holy stories that we were

fed. That we had needles pushed into our uterus and breast. How

even once was enough. We’ll tell them we did not mean to keep the

ones in power in power. We’ll tell them about power outages. The

leaving of water. The shifting sun and all the wrong colors. We’ll tell

them there was war here once and then again there was war. We’ll tell

them we ate too much and spent too much and considered the street

beggar with the drugged child on her chest invisible. We’ll tell them

how we became invisible. How we told on each other. How we stayed

up some nights because we did not believe the moon would ever

come back. We’ll tell them we believed in the muscle of the moon

and the ebb and flow of lies. We will tell them we lied. Stole from

each other. Never forgave forgiveness. We’ll tell them how we hated

food. Processed it. Threw it up. And /sometimes/ we ate it. We’ll tell

them there was once a word and that word was [home] but we did not

know what it meant so we left it behind to burn. We watched it on

the news and remembered its light. Its infinite forest where trees were

and weren’t. Where the scent of yasmeen reminded us of the hands

of our mothers and the leaving of grass. We’ll tell them about grass.

And how we were forced instead to learn the language of concrete

and billboards and deserts /and the absence of birds./ We’ll tell them

about birds and the thick song of departure stuck in our throat. How

these birds took us from one country to another. We’ll tell them about

countries. And how we needed papers to visit. We’ll try to explain

permission. [We will try to explain permission.] And how sometimes

we got it and sometimes we didn’t. We will say we did not all deserve

the passage. We’ll tell them how we pulled off our limbs and folded

our bones and drowned them in the red womb of water to get there.

We’ll explain water. How it came down in threads from the thick blue

attic and how it spread as a river. We will try to explain river. And we

will fail.

[thecommonmag]

With Rewa Zeinati

“Let me just say that ‘Beirut is a vibrant city’ is a popular cliché we’ve all heard before. But it’s also a cruel city, a careless city, a dangerously luring city.”