FOR SOUHAYLA

by Vera Ignatowitsch 

Souhayla, one of the many Yazidi woman who were kidnapped by the Islamic State, outside the home of an uncle who wants her story to be told. Credit Alex Potter for The New York Times. You can listen to her story on “The Daily” podcast of The New York Times: After Mosul, Iraq, was liberated, two New York Times reporters encountered a group of women who had been enslaved by the Islamic State for years. Days after the city’s fall, they still believed that the militant group had taken over the world. Guests: Rukmini Callimachi, who covers terrorism and the Islamic State for The Times, and Andy Mills, a producer for “The Daily” who is in Iraq with her.

Hush child, it’s not time to tell
of the horrors you endured,
of the seven shades of hell
drowned in while your bones matured.
Do not ask. It took too long,
endless years to bring you back.
Flesh survived repeated wrong.
Lurking in the cul-de-sac
of your thighs a childhood waits
to be mourned with healing dirge.
Searing sorrow contemplates
crucial years lived on a verge,
stifling screams as each one mounts,
riding you in crude abuse.
Sleep now. One day we may count
wounds that do not bear excuse.

          You do not know. You were not there.
          It never stopped. They didn’t care.

Vera Ignatowitsch is addicted to poetry, raspberries, and occasionally good scotch. Her poems have appeared in 2 anthologies and a number of publications including The Lyric. She is editor of Formal & Rhyming poetry for Better Than Starbucks Poetry Magazine.

EXAMPLE

by Salvador Díaz Mirón 
from his 1901 collection Lascas [Stone Chippings]; 
translation by Julie Steiner

Iraqi children giggle at the body of a half-buried Islamic State militant while talking to an Iraqi soldier in the al-Barid district in Mosul, Iraq. Photo: AP via Metro, December 19, 2016.

The flyblown corpses of Islamic State militants have been rotting along a main street in north Mosul for two weeks, a health risk for passersby.  . . . Islamic State has executed thousands of Iraqi soldiers and policemen, and their comrades are eager for revenge. "We leave them in the street like that so the dogs eat them," said soldier Asaad Hussein. "We also want the citizens to know there is a price for supporting terrorists.". . . A few streets away, a group of young boys walked towards three more Islamic State corpses. "The bodies should stay. Daesh killed lots of people so why should they be buried," said Salem Jamil, 13, . . . but a man who approached said the bodies should be buried because that is everyone's right. —“Iraqi forces wage psychological war with jihadist corpses” Reuters, February 6, 2017

Brandished from a tree-branch, the cadaver was decaying
as if it were a gruesome fruit still dangling from its stalk:
a testament to judgment whose absurdity would shock;
a pendulum intruding on the roadway with its swaying.

The nudity’s indecency, the stuck-out tongue displaying,
and hair that formed a jester’s coxcomb, lock by upright lock,
gave him a buffoonish look; and where my horse should walk,
a group of ragged children mocked, derisive laughter braying.

And the melancholy carcass, with its head inclined to yaw—
abominable, bloated, on a gibbet leafy-green—
spread odors on the breeze (which was a wind, in fact, and raw)

as it rocked with swings like censer-passes, solemn and serene.
And the sun went on ascending through a blue without a flaw,
and the landscape was idyllic, a Tibullus-lyric scene.


EJEMPLO
por Salvador Díaz Mirón (de su colección Lascas, 1901).


En la rama el expuesto cadáver se pudría,
como un horrible fruto colgante junto al tallo,
rindiendo testimonio de inverosímil fallo
y con ritmo de péndola oscilando en la vía.

La desnudez impúdica, la lengua que salía
y alto mechón en forma de una cresta de gallo,
dábanle aspecto bufo; y al pie de mi caballo
un grupo de arrapiezos holgábase y reía.

Y el fúnebre despojo, con la cabeza gacha,
escandaloso y tumido en el verde patíbulo
desparramaba hedores en brisa como racha,

mecido con solemnes compases de Turíbulo.

Y el sol iba en ascenso por un azul sin tacha,
y el campo era figura de una canción de Tíbulo.

Salvador Díaz Mirón (1853-1928) was a Mexican poet from Veracruz. Julie Steiner (1968- ) is a translator in San Diego, California.

FLEEING MOSUL

by Seree Zohar

Between 700 and 1,000 people arrive daily from the embattled city of Mosul to the stretch of UN-run refugee camps just 20 kilometers east of the city's outskirts. —CNN, December 18, 2016. Photo: Iraqi IDPs (internally displaced people ) from fighting in the village of Shora, south of Mosul, reach an Iraqi army checkpoint on the northern outskirts of Qayyarah, which was liberated from ISIS but is still engulfed in thick black smoke from oil wells set ablaze by the retreating militants. IDP’s who reach Qayyarah are then taken to the Ja’dah IDP camp, October 2016. Ivor Prickett—UNHCR via Time.

Homing pigeon launched through dawn, your rhythm alights on me,
fingers, gloats, dehisces: prayer, your cadence chooses me.

White flag?  We hadn't time to buy one.  And nothing here stays white.
Brethren!  We are light!  Scourges thunder news to me.

Amorphous tented Mama,  my weary footsteps echo yours.
Did I once beg for makeup?  To age so young no more amuses me.

On red-moist stone the thrashing dove’s heart seeks its startled head
as the moon shatters her mirror.  A hone-edged screeching nooses me.

In gasps accursed by memory, sounds palpitate, untongued.
Sheared of speech, my youngster throat: its grunted coo accuses me.

They thrill to this: to snatch and strip, recast their prophet’s land
where, slim as a rising blade, a martyr grooms, then bruises, me.

Mama, snatch up your hem and run, for torpor now diffuses me.
My spilling psyche frays.  My throwaway martyr loses me.


Seree Zohar has work published or forthcoming in various print and online venues.

OTHER SIDE GHAZAL

by Judith Terzi




The quinceañera, the college graduation. You won't be here.
For your parents' fiftieth. Sorry, you won't be traveling here.

Deported for one ounce of grass. You rode the big bus twice.
You wander dreamless south of the border. You won't be here.

Your mother––sin papeles. Twenty years of tucking corners.
Ten more nurturing others' kids. She can't go there, she's here.

Your father––paperless––mower of grass, nurturer of crops.
Builder of bookcases, family, walls. Thirty years of here.

No re-entry to the USA. No entry. Stay in Aleppo, Mosul.
Trek to Gaza City, Jordan, Istanbul. No welcome mat here.

Endure the tarp of tents, bitterness in your husband's glance.
Let dust on your wife's hijab thicken. You can't come here.

Another quiet cycle through your prayer beads––misbaha.
Kiss weariness from your children's smiles. Not allowed here.

We're sorry our gods have seized the heart of this matter.
They say our country may be great again. You won't be here.

Judith Terzi's poetry has appeared in a wide variety of journals and anthologies including Caesura, Malala: Poems for Malala Yousafzai, Raintown Review, Spillway, Unsplendid, and Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond. If You Spot Your Brother Floating By is her most recent chapbook from Kattywompus Press. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and Web.

MOSUL

John Guzlowski's writing has appeared in Rattle, North American Review, Ontario Review, Nimrod, Salon.com, and many other journals and reviews.  Garrison Keillor read his poem "What My Father Believed" on The Writers Almanac. Guzlowski's 5th book of poems Echoes of Tattered Tongues was a highlighted book in this year's Publishers Weekly Poetry Month issue. 

A VIEW FROM HOME

by David Chorlton

On March 24, the international tribunal in The Hague delivered the Radovan Karadzic verdict - more than 20 years after he was indicted and eight years after he was finally arrested. By this judgment, like most of those delivered by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) judges, nationalistic ideologies were described as the reason behind the killings, tortures, forced detentions, mass rapes, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Unfortunately, people from the Balkans, but also in other parts of the world, did not grasp the message hidden behind the legal jargon. Over the years, international tribunals have never put enough effort to make their decisions clearer to average people; and this is often abused by politicians who interpret those decisions however they like. . . . After 23 years of work, the international tribunal in The Hague did not succeed in having a real impact on the people of the region. We did not hear loudly and clearly the judgment against nationalism, even though the judges did issue many. —Nidzara Ahmetasevic, Aljazeera, March 27, 2016. Photo:  A survivor of the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica prays by her husband’s grave at a memorial centre in Potocari, on 24 March 2016, the day the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić was found guilty of genocide. Photograph: Elvis Barukcic/AFP/Getty Images via The Guardian.

The scene today is tranquil
at the window where
a verdin flies between the roses
and the bougainvillea
unaware that glass is all
that keeps it safe from cats
alert to its every movement.
Outside, the afternoon’s
long shadows alternate
with glowing pavement
and winter’s dormant grass
begins to green. By the hour
news breaks in: the morning radio,
analysis at noon, and television
with its reruns of the panic
after Tuesday’s attack, translated
from French and Flemish now
and who knows which language
next. Interviewing experts
brings no more comfort
than the speeches made
by candidates campaigning.
The sparrows are chattering
in the bushes, and mockingbirds
pursue the last, late insects.
The battle for Mosul
won’t be over soon, Boko Haram
sends young girls out
to become stars for a moment
before being dead forever,
and every holiday in Europe
begins with armed guards
on patrol. Home is a good place
to be, watching lovebirds
in the sumac, listening to the news
that Radovan Karadžić
has been found guilty, guilty, guilty,
of killing on a scale
others only dream of, yet he still
finds a word for innocent
that applies to him alone.

David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems have appeared in many publications on- and off-line, and reflect his affection for the natural world, as well as occasional bewilderment at aspects of human behavior. His most recent book, A Field Guide to Fire, was his contribution to the Fires of Change exhibition shown in Flagstaff and Tucson in Arizona.

THE ARTHUR MURRAY STUDIO IN MOSUL

by Christopher Woods

Has gone dark and quiet and sad,
But still the dancers come,
All ages, both sexes, sit in chairs,
In circles, or in lines facing each other,
No longer allowed the art of movement.
But imagination still breathes deeply
As they imagine dancing a polka,
Foxtrot, recall the smiles of partners
Taking each other’s hands, or holding
A lover close as a song ends.
No music here now, but who can forget
A glorious Strauss waltz, a sensual samba.
Still, they cannot, will not, surrender.
So in the ballroom gloom,
They silently, defiantly,
Hum Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”
Over the din of madness
In the street outside.


Christopher Woods is a writer, teacher and photographer who lives in Texas.

THE FALL OF MOSUL

by George Held

Refugees flee the city of Mosul. The delicately balanced relations among the many communities were permanently shattered in 2003. Photograph: Str/AP. The Guardian, June 13, 2014.

Take it back, we left it,
We will not summon the troops
To fight again for it,
We will not countenance

Another long drawn out
Battle on your homeland,
The corpses, gutted and bloodied,
Strewn, like trash, on the ground.

Mosul is Assyrian, Kurd, Iraqi,
Turkmen, Shabak, Shi’ite, Sunni,
And the oil refinery earns more
Per hour than the marketplaces

For fruits of paradise, leather toolers,
Carpet merchants’ stalls
And sheep-herders’ pens
Combined do per year.

Mosul, you fell in 2003
And now ISIS (not
The Egyptian goddess
of magic and life),

initiates in the sacred order
of hatred and arch violence,
Have achieved the latest fall
Of Cheney and Bush,

Who on 3 May 2003
Declared from ship’s deck
“The Battle of Iraq is over,”
But that mission will never

Be accomplished despite
4,447 American dead,
32,000 wounded plus
Thousands with PTSD

And other extreme debilitations;
Plus one trillion dollars
(Think what this sum could mean
For schools, bridges, healthcare).

Now 68% of Americans
Polled feel no obligation

(<F obliger) to help Iraqis
After we destroyed their country:

No noblesse, no oblige;
No ligature (the “lig”
In “obligation”) tying us
To this desolated land.

Mosul, Baiji, Samarra—
All fall on the road to Baghdad.
(Where are Crosby and Hope
When we really need them?)

Where can we find any hope
In stopping the ISIS advance?
Will the fall of Mosul end
In the union of Syria and Iraq,

A wide swath from the Med
To Iran, the destabilization
Of the Middle East, a threat
To Turkey and Israel?

Where are the leaders
Who can reverse America’s
Knee-jerk reliance on military
Solutions to geopolitical problems?

Is the fall of Mosul a milestone
On the road to the fall
Of (God bless) the
United States of America?


George Held, a regular contributor to The New Verse News, has a new book out soon from Poets Wear Prada, Culling: New & Selected Nature Poems.