by Adam J. Scarborough
The day
Adam J. Scarborough is a Scottish writer and social practice artist based in Minnesota. His work has been presented across Europe and New York. His poetry has appeared in Gutter Magazine.
misplaces the sun.
Somewhere
a sky still burns blue
but not here.
Here—
a black noon.
The maps keep shedding people.
Five hundred thousand
coats and shoes—missing from their hallways;
names folded into cars, trucks,
onto motorcycles and buses,
heading north from Lebanon.
A child carries a key
to a pile of ash.
—
Missiles write their brief alphabets
over Abu Dhabi—
two hundred thirty-eight
steel sentences
falling through prayer.
Most of them
erased mid-air.
Even the sky now
has editors.
—
Control of the air,
they say.
The sky is a throat
they have learned
to close.
Jets move there
like indifferent saints.
—
Smoke remembers the night.
Tehran wakes
with black in its mouth.
Balconies gather soot
like winter birds.
Cars wear the same dark coat.
The street
a long finger,
dragged through ash.
—
Oil depots
burn through the hours
when sleep should hold the city.
Ten million lungs
turn quietly
in their beds.
Above them
the sky writes in smoke—
language without vowels.
—
Morning arrives
as rain.
Not mercy.
A rain that stings the eyes,
touches the throat
with a thin metal hand.
Acid falling softly
on bread
on figs left in bowls
on the open skin
of the city.
—
The doctors speak
from distant rooms.
Particles,
they say.
Invisible dust
entering the small, naked doors of the body.
Asthma remembers.
The heart
tightens its fist.
Even the air
now carries
a slow instruction.
—
Do not open the window.
Do not turn the fan.
Cover the food.
Wait.
As if waiting
could rinse the sky.
—
A special relationship
spits across red neckties
tied like telephone wires,
fizzing with foreign cries.
Night keeps arriving early.
Lebanon counts its dead
in the hundreds—
three hundred ninety-four
and still the number
breathes.
Dust enters the lungs
of the city.
Beirut
a broken bell.
—
Elsewhere the world practices
this same dark grammar:
Sudan
South Sudan
Ukraine—
where the ground
remembers fire
longer than people do.
—
And somewhere a man
with a borrowed crown
waits in a golden room
for the door
to open.
Another country
dragged forward
by the nose of a name.
—
Still
someone lights a stove.
Someone boils water.
Someone somewhere
opens a window
to see
if the sun
has been returned.
Somewhere
a sky still burns blue
but not here.
Here—
a black noon.
The maps keep shedding people.
Five hundred thousand
coats and shoes—missing from their hallways;
names folded into cars, trucks,
onto motorcycles and buses,
heading north from Lebanon.
A child carries a key
to a pile of ash.
—
Missiles write their brief alphabets
over Abu Dhabi—
two hundred thirty-eight
steel sentences
falling through prayer.
Most of them
erased mid-air.
Even the sky now
has editors.
—
Control of the air,
they say.
The sky is a throat
they have learned
to close.
Jets move there
like indifferent saints.
—
Smoke remembers the night.
Tehran wakes
with black in its mouth.
Balconies gather soot
like winter birds.
Cars wear the same dark coat.
The street
a long finger,
dragged through ash.
—
Oil depots
burn through the hours
when sleep should hold the city.
Ten million lungs
turn quietly
in their beds.
Above them
the sky writes in smoke—
language without vowels.
—
Morning arrives
as rain.
Not mercy.
A rain that stings the eyes,
touches the throat
with a thin metal hand.
Acid falling softly
on bread
on figs left in bowls
on the open skin
of the city.
—
The doctors speak
from distant rooms.
Particles,
they say.
Invisible dust
entering the small, naked doors of the body.
Asthma remembers.
The heart
tightens its fist.
Even the air
now carries
a slow instruction.
—
Do not open the window.
Do not turn the fan.
Cover the food.
Wait.
As if waiting
could rinse the sky.
—
A special relationship
spits across red neckties
tied like telephone wires,
fizzing with foreign cries.
Night keeps arriving early.
Lebanon counts its dead
in the hundreds—
three hundred ninety-four
and still the number
breathes.
Dust enters the lungs
of the city.
Beirut
a broken bell.
—
Elsewhere the world practices
this same dark grammar:
Sudan
South Sudan
Ukraine—
where the ground
remembers fire
longer than people do.
—
And somewhere a man
with a borrowed crown
waits in a golden room
for the door
to open.
Another country
dragged forward
by the nose of a name.
—
Still
someone lights a stove.
Someone boils water.
Someone somewhere
opens a window
to see
if the sun
has been returned.
Adam J. Scarborough is a Scottish writer and social practice artist based in Minnesota. His work has been presented across Europe and New York. His poetry has appeared in Gutter Magazine.