Dark and Lovely After Take-Off (A Future)
by Yona Harvey

Nobody straightens their hair anymore.
Space trips & limited air supplies will get you conscious quick.

My shea-buttered braids glow planetary
as I turn unconcerned, unburned by the pre-take-off bother.

“Leave it all behind,” my mother’d told me,
sweeping the last specs of copper thread from her front porch steps &

just as quick, she turned her back to me. Why
had she disappeared so suddenly behind that earthly door?

“Our people have made progress, but, perhaps,”
she’d said once, “not enough to guarantee safe voyage

to the Great Beyond,” beyond where Jesus
walked, rose, & ascended in the biblical tales that survived

above sprocket-punctured skylines &
desert-dusted runways jeweled with wrenches & sheet metal scraps.

She’d no doubt exhale with relief to know
ancient practice & belief died hard among the privileged, too.

Hundreds of missions passed & failed, but here
I was strapped in my seat, anticipating—what exactly?

Curved in prayer or remembrance of a hurt
so deep I couldn’t speak. Had that been me slammed to the ground, cuffed,

bulleted with pain as I danced with pain
I couldn’t shake loose, even as the cops aimed pistols at me,

my body & mind both disconnected
& connected & unable to freeze, though they shouted “freeze!”

like actors did on bad television.
They’d watched & thought they recognized me, generic or bland,

without my mother weeping like Mary,
Ruby, Idella, Geneava, or Ester stunned with a grief

our own countrymen refused to see, to
acknowledge or cease initiating, instigating, &

even mocking in the social networks,
ignorant frays bent and twisted like our DNA denied

but thriving and evident nonetheless—
You better believe the last things I saw when far off lifted

were Africa Africa Africa
Africa Africa Africa Africa Africa…

& though it pained me to say it sooner:
the unmistakable absence of the Great Barrier Reef.

About This Poem

“I used to harshly judge two women who in my storytelling I called ‘The Women from Mars.’ It didn’t take long, though, before I realized I was one of them. (Of course, I was!) So, I started to write as/with/through/alongside/about us. Visual artist Alisha Wormsley makes art that operates in what she calls the Fifth Dimension: where the past, present, and future coexist. Shout out to Alisha and shout out to complex narratives by and about Black women. This poem is one small piece of a larger story I’m telling.”
—Yona Harvey

The poems “Character” and “Border” are both about the patriarchy and how they hold the female speakers back in life. In the poem “Character,” the speaker has to take the first steps from her sheltered home, but if she does there will be men who are harassing her every step of the way, while in the poem “Border,” the patriarchal society is holding her from moving forward with things she wants to do in life.

“You’re a girl/ and you’d better not forget/ that when you step over the threshold of your house/ men will look askance at you.” This poem starts off speaking a truth that the readers can connect with. The last few lines of the poem are where the feminist theme comes in strong in this poem. “If you’ve got no character/ you’ll turn back,/ and if not/ you’ll keep on going,/ as you’re going on now.” These lines are where the theme shows up the heaviest, the idea to carry on if you have the strength to, to keep moving in a patriarchal society. The way this poem is set up, it is saying that the only way to move up in a patriarchy as a female is to force your way up and to keep moving.

“I’m going to move ahead./ Behind me my whole family is calling,/ my child is pulling at my sari-end,/ my husband stands blocking the door,/ but I will go./ There’s nothing ahead but a river/ I will cross./ I know how to swim but they/ won’t let me swim, won’t let me cross.” This poem is set up after this first stanza like a wave. She tries to move forward and life knocks her back. The waves take you where they want you to go, and the family and her husband are the metaphorical waves in this poem. This poem is about the speaker being forced to stay stagnant, like a lake, but the speaker has waves crashing back on her and pulling her farther and farther from her goal. She, at the end, decides that no matter what she is going to cross the river.

This is how the two poems are similar: that no matter how you need to do it, you move forward and make your own path in a society that men control. “Character” and “Border” end in similar ways. The ending of “Border” is “There’s nothing ahead but a river/ and I know how to swim./ Why shouldn’t I go? I’ll go.” Forcing yourself into the society dominated by men is, in these poems, the only way to make it in the world.

Our sweet soldiers
wanted nothing for themselves.
All they ever asked
was to come home
safe.

In this poem, Dahlia Ravikovitch expresses a spontaneous reaction to a political and military event. Her poems are engaged, and just by being an Israeli writer, she is de facto politically engaged and apprehended with prejudices, good or bad ones.

In other poems she uses mythological characters or biblical references (Medea and Abraham, for instance), but in this one she refers directly to two particular things: Shatila and Sabra. Shatila is a camp that was created in 1949, two years after the creation of the State of Israel, by Palestinians who were refugees at the border of Lebanon. Sabra is a Hebrew word used to talk about people who were born before 1947 in Palestine, but it is still used in current Hebrew to talk about any Jew born in Israel. These two terms are used in the same way as the mythological ones in other poems in that the author does not explain them. This absence of explanation can lead the reader to do some research, but it can also mean that Ravikovitch is reacting to something and writes not to be read or at least thinks that people who are reading her work are familiar with these references.

The whole point of this poem is a reaction to what happened with the Palestinian population and what Tsahal did to these populations. She is referring to the soldiers as “our soldiers,” so she is including herself in what happens and takes a part of the responsibility. Yet her position is totally against what is going on; she writes this poem to accuse her state of “killing” people. Even if she doesn’t depict any actual crime, there were, of course, crimes committed at that time. And what strikes me is that the worst part of the poem may be that she describes a scene in which soldiers are chasing Palestinians and especially women and children but not killing anyone. The last stanza is constructed with an oxymoron first — “our sweet soldiers” — and expresses a point of view that is now widespread in Israel about the government and the conflict with the Palestinians. Israelis have to be in Tsahal for at least three years for boys and two years for girls, but for most of them, they don’t want to do it and they don’t want to hurt anybody. They just want to go home, to be safe and to get back to their lives. The title is eponymous to a line of the poem and evokes Palestinian children who don’t have a home anymore and are dehumanized. But it can also apply to the soldiers who are in a way not their own anymore after they join the army. Also, the fact that in the first stanza Dahlia Ravikovitch talks about the Palestinians as Sabra is giving a clear indication of her political vision because they were born on the land of Israel so they are Sabra in the first meaning of the word. But it’s subversive to apply this term to them because since the creation of the state of Israel, the term has changed and only applies to Jewish people.

Dahilia Ravilovitch, “The Sound of Birds at Noon”

“The Sound of Birds at Noon” is a very different poem than the others in Ravilovitch’s collection. The lines “They sing without giving us a thought,” “Some are rare, some are common,/but every wing is grace,” “This chirp is entirely free of malice” employ an entirely different voice than “when that hand closes over her hair, grasping it/without a shred of pity,” or “first they shot/then they hanged/ then they slaughtered with their knives.” These disturbing graphic images gave me a sense of deep emotional turmoil roiling throughout the other poems. However, the narrator speaks of the birds in a distant, almost scientific way.

The use of pronouns is also very different. In every other poem in this collection the pronouns I, your, and our are scattered throughout as if Ravilovitch is putting humanity’s stamp of ownership on the poems. “The Sound of Birds at Noon” doesn’t have this possessive note to it. The birds are referred to as they or their, further distancing them from human meddling. I would almost call this poem childish except for the very subtle notes of tension, particularly in the last line that provides a distant connection between the two worlds. “Over the years/ it even seems to have/a note of compassion.” My take on this is that the birds are so free from humanity that they can afford to feel compassion for us.

It is interesting that Ravilovitch would choose to incorporate this poem in among her other works. I suspect that it was to give the reader a bit of a breather from some of her darker works, but also to provide a contrast for the human world that she is painting. The poem’s placement gives the reader a sense that this dark world shown in the other poems isn’t the only one out there. While this airy world might not be a human one, it still coexists with it up to a point. It also gives me a sense of concern for this world of birds. I cannot help but wonder how long it will remain so distant from humans.

While there are some aspects of Taslima Nasrin’s poems that specifically relate to life in Bangladesh, the feminist themes are very relevant in America – and across the world – today. Her poem “Character” begins with a message that is drilled into women’s heads from the start: “You’re a girl/ and you’d better not forget” (401). Nasrin describes how men will always call women names and look at them in ways that make them uncomfortable. Women are taught that “boys will be boys,” and they must be the ones who have to learn to defend themselves, instead of men being taught not to harass women. Because “you’re a girl,” you’re taught to accept men’s inappropriate behavior and to live with it, no matter how uncomfortable or frightened you are. However, Nasrin turns this poem into an encouraging message for women. “If you’ve got no character/ you’ll turn back,” she writes, “and if not/ you’ll keep going,/ as you’re going now” (402). Here, the poet encourages women to live their lives despite the men who harass them. One can’t simply stay in her house forever, being afraid of what she will face when she goes outside. Women have to acknowledge what the world is like, yes, but they should use that acknowledgement to learn to stand strong in a world that is often against them.

“At the Back of Progress…” is another poem that is particularly relevant to American society today. Nasrin writes, “The fellow who sits in the air-conditioned office/is the one who in his youth raped/ a dozen or so young girls/… This fellow gives out character references for people” (403). The poem describes a man who treats women horribly, yet he gets away with it because people see him as a “good man” and would never suspect “how foul his language could be/ how vile his behavior” (403). With the rise of the “Me Too” movement, there was a lot of backlash toward the accusers because so many “good men” were accused of assault, and those accusations could “ruin them.” As we see in this poem and in recent media, however, this is not the case. A powerful man can be accused of sexual assault and still remain in power, if not gaining more. Nasrin’s poem shows readers that one can never know what goes on behind closed doors; just because someone seems like a good person in public doesn’t mean they behave that way in private. This is always important to keep in mind, but it is especially so in America’s current political climate.

Taslima Nasrin’s poem “Border” is told from the point of view of a woman fantasizing about leaving her family for a life of freedom.  Interestingly, she intends on returning, which is different from many stories with this theme.  The narrator is Hindi, and from the limited research I did on the roles of women in Hindi families, women are expected to be subservient to their husbands and devoted to their children.  It seems to me that this behavior is ingrained into the narrator’s very being, which is why she repeats the refrain “and then return” after saying what she’ll do once she escapes from her family.

The poem reads as if the narrator is trying to convince herself to leave, despite her longing to do so.  She clearly feels trapped by her family – “I know how to swim but they / won’t let me swim, won’t let me cross.”  While dreaming about her escape, she imagines playing keep-away and dancing as she did as a child.  The longing with which she speaks of these dreams makes it seem as though the narrator is ready to leave her home immediately, but reading the last line of the poem made me wonder about this.  “Why shouldn’t I go?  I’ll go,” the speaker says.  I think this line can be taken two ways:  as a woman determined to temporarily leave her responsibilities who is ready to leave as soon as possible, or as one who wants desperately to leave and is trying to convince herself but lacks the courage to do so.  I think the second explanation is more likely.  Another word that Nasrin repeats throughout the poem is “someday.”  To me, adding this word to each description of the things she’ll do when she gets away shows that while she has the dream to leave, she lacks the courage to actually do so.

“Character” might be one of the shorter poems in the set we read for class, but it has one of the clearest voices.  “You’re a girl/ and you’d better not forget…” Nasrin writes in the opening lines, sounding both accusatory and commanding at the same time.  As the poem continues, though, we learn that she is simply informing her subject of the way things are.  And that reality is a harsh and degrading one.

“If you’ve got no character/ you’ll turn back,” she continues, “and if not/ you’ll keep on going, as you’re going now.”  These lines are a clever way of saying that there is no way for a woman to have honor or respect in the place Nasrin is writing about.  A girl can turn back and go inside her house to avoid harassment if she does not have character, but staying outside and going about her business also insinuates that she has no character.

According to her biography at the beginning of the PDF, we learn that Nasrin was forced to leave her home country of Bangladesh because of her writing, and that many of her books have been banned because of their anti-religious commentary.  “Character” reflects what I have come to understand about her personality from the short descriptions I have read: Nasrin is not afraid to speak her mind, no matter the cost.  She writes about the inequality of men and women in “Character” because it is unjust and needs to be addressed.

“At the Back of Progress…” raises an interesting question: is true equality ever guaranteed? It’s been almost 54 years since the Civil Rights Act was passed, and yet we are still fighting racism on a daily basis in this country; women are still fighting for equal pay and reproductive rights, though it’s been decades since the Equal Pay Act and Roe vs. Wade; since 2015, it’s been legal for gay couples all across the United States to marry, yet many parishes still refuse to perform wedding ceremonies for same-sex couples. This poem reminds us that, no matter how far we advance as a society, that same level of advancement is not guaranteed for each individual. There will always be those who disagree with the way things are; this could be because they were raised by someone who remembered and valued the old way of doing things, or simply because change of any kind can feel strange or even threatening.

This poem also reminds us that no matter how respectable or kind a person may seem outwardly, you can’t always know what they are like personally:

“The employee who’s speaking in such a low voice
that no one knows or would ever suspect
how much he could raise his voice at home,
how foul his language could be
how vile his behavior.”

“The bearer who brings the tea
Who keeps the lighter in his pocket
And who gets a couple of taka as a tip:
He’s divorced his first wife for her sterility,
His second wife for giving birth to a daughter,
He’s divorced his third wife for not bringing dowry.
Returning home, this fellow beats his fourth wife
Over a couple of green chilis or a handful of cooked rice.”

Nasrin reminds us that there will always be opposition amidst progression and that, in spite of it, everyone must do their best to uphold true equality, even with the possibility that it may never exist.

After every war
someone has to tidy up.
Things won’t pick
themselves up, after all.

In reading the selected poems by Wislaw Szymborska, I found that her work entitled “The End and The Beginning” stood out to me the most. In researching her life, I found that her work was often inspired by her experience of growing up in Poland in the span of time between two devastating world wars. This particular poem is interesting in that instead of focusing on the grisly carnage of the battlefield, it focuses on the lesser talked about destruction that war leaves behind. Each of the poem’s stanzas talks about the way the war has changed the lives of the citizens of the country as well as the inherent trauma of living through such a destructive event. The way she uses language really conveys the quiet suffering of the civilians left behind to deal with their own inner battles as time continues to pass and the world moves on to other wars in other places.

Those who knew
what this was all about
must make way for those
who know little.
And less than that.
And at last nothing less than nothing.

In this poem, Szymborska writes about the destruction war can cause and the time and healing the effects of the war have, but with that comes the beginning of a new life. The overall choice of words by the implies the serious narrative to this poem, thus pulling the reader visualize and feel the effects a war would bring.

Someone got to shove
the rubble to the roadsides,
so the cars loaded with corpses
can pass.

The repetition and use of the word someone in this poem, follow with a task shows the time and effort that ANYONE would feel and witness after the war.

I think the ending of this poem is the most haunting as Szymborska writes about how little new generations don’t realize about the hardships and effects a war had, and how that information is lost over time when those generations die.

In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.

When you ask most people what their favorite part of a play is, they’re probably not going to say “when it was over,” especially if the play was a good one. That is what makes Wislawa Szymborska’s poem “Theater Impressions” so interesting. Szymborska writes, “For me a tragedy’s most important act is the sixth:/ the resurrecting from the stage’s battlegrounds,/ the adjusting of wigs, of robes,/ the wrenching of knife from breast,/ the removing of noose from neck,/ the lining up among the living to face the audience” (140). She goes on to describe the dead characters coming back to life and acknowledging that their deaths weren’t real. In the last stanza, she describes the lowering of the curtain, leaving us with a lasting image: “Only then does a third, invisible [hand]/ perform its duty:/ it clutches at my throat” (141).

What about the end of a play causes the speaker to feel the way she does? Is the true tragedy having to acknowledge that something is over? Or is it the fact that there was no real tragedy to begin with? Perhaps the speaker has had to face death in her life, and the fact that the dead in the play can “return to life” upsets her. Given Szymborska’s life in Poland during World War II, it is probably safe to say that she witnessed a lot of death and experienced a lot of trauma in her early years. That experience surely influenced her writing of this poem. The “sixth act” of the play could represent the end of the war. Though the dead would not actually come back to life, the actors taking their bows could be a representation of the hope of better things to come at the end of the war, or it could be the speaker simply wishing the war never occurred in the first place. The hand clutching the speaker’s throat at the end of the poem serves as a reminder that the impact the war had on Syzmborska would never go away – it would be something that haunted her forever.

I agree with the introductory line that Wislaw Szymborska creates a “detached sympathy with her subjects.” This is important when dealing with poetry because it has a bad reputation for getting too sappy and cheesy. I firmly blame this on the overabundance of love poems in our culture. By providing the readers with a bit of irony, the entire tone of the poem changes, allowing the reader to pull back a little from the characters.

“Unexpected Meeting”
When I read this poem my first thought was that the world these people are in has turned on its head and not in a good way. I particularly liked the line, “Our sharks drown in water.” Everything that we would consider natural is gone only leaving the unnatural behind. The world changed because of the fighting between these two people or groups of people. I don’t know if the fighting was physical or metaphorical. There is a very strong sense of tension when they are talking politely to one another, that it is difficult to determine the exact relationship between these two groups. At first, I wondered if it was two warring nations who had destroyed the world around them, but that seemed a little extreme for the poem. However if one looks at it like a separated couple the fighting could have been metaphorical and both of their worlds were drastically changed.
There is an empty stillness in the polite talk, contrasted with the violent movement of the list of animals. If these two people were a couple who fought so much they decided to separate, there would have been bad blood on either side. Now that time has passed and they meet once more they have nothing to say to each other because everything meaningful or passionate has already been said and they are left with polite gibber gabber on repeat that they can’t even finish.

“The Women of Rubens”
This poem is a tribute to time, beauty, and gender. It’s subject is women who, in this time period, would not be considered the cream of the crop while in the seventeenth century were the epitome of beauty. I enjoyed all the mentions of the old masters in the poem. It added to the different sense of beauty that the poem speaks of. After all one of arts, main appeals to many is its beauty. This poem also speaks to the fact that if a woman doesn’t think she is beautiful she acts very differently from the ones that do.

“Pietà”
This is an interesting title for the poem, particularly when she never mentions the hero by name or exactly what he did. Still the reader gets that whoever this guy is he did something great that is somehow cheapened by all the people walking in and out of his home asking the same questions, over and over again. There is a polish on the answers that his mother gives that says she has answered this many times before, and all the yes, yes, yes give the reader the impression of nodding. Still to name your poem after a famous statue of the Virgin Mary holding a dead Jesus is a very painful image to connect this with. It adds an extra layer of emotional depth and complexity. I think that it shows that despite the mother’s calm appearance and will practiced answers she still hurts for her long gone son. Perhaps this opening up to tourists are her way of resurrecting him.

“Theater Impressions”
I cannot tell at the end if it is a good clutch or a bad one. Becoming emotional can give you that tight feeling in your throat but it doesn’t mean that the emotion is a bad one. However, the fact that this play was a tragedy, and the wording, “it clutches my throat” does have sinister or negative connotations. I do love the way that the character views the play. Starting at a place where many lose interest in the actual plot and are only focus on thanking the actors is very unusual.

“Under a Certain Little Star”
The strongest theme in this poem was the desire to size and experience everything there is in life, even if it is not physically possible, like living as every man and women or apologizing to a tree for her table legs. There is also a great deal of sorrow that this isn’t possible because “I myself am an obstacle to myself.”

“Reality Demands”
I loved this poem. It is the brutal truth, but also shows that this might not be the worst thing in the world. One of its main themes is time. Time moves on and soon the old battlefields that were so tragic and vivid in its time will be forgotten despite the attempt to remember them. This is never so clearly shown as her descriptions of people still experience day-to-day moments like sending letters, painting a park bench, and seeing blooming flowers in these places where so much death has occurred.
It is ironic that so many people have died in these various battles for their beliefs and causes. However, reality demands (hahaha) that they are forgotten, or not quite as remembered as they were. This may give the impression of narcissism but one should also remember that the ideals the people died/fought for could still be present. So that even though the individual fades in the grand scheme of things bits of their lives and experiences still live on today.

“The End and the Beginning”
I would say this is a hopeful poem with a touch of irony. Hopeful because all the hard work of rebuilding succeeds in creating peace in a land where there was war. Where there used to be, “sofa springs/the shards of glass/the bloody rags,” there is now a cornfield with a farmer boy staring up at the clouds. However, it is ironic and painful because humans can’t remember the pain and suffering of war. If you can’t learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it. The growing ignorance of what war means to the common people is very clear. In the end, the way the farmer’s boy is described as lying, “in the grass that covers up/the cause and effects/… (while he’s) gawking at the clouds” shows that the transformation is complete. Still, this is one of my favorite poems because of the imagery.

Try to Praise the Mutilated World
by Adam Zagajewski

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You’ve seen the refugees going nowhere,
you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.