Nicole Callihan and Samar Abdel Jaber
Translucence (5)
An empty boat
is not much of a boat
I am wracked
with tenderness
I could say we are all refugees
but how wrong
I would be
I would be
so wrong
the thing inside
which capsizes
all night we rode
towards the shore
and the shore
towards us
English by Nicole Callihan
بين قارّتين (٥)
لو أنّ البحر
بقي هادئاً ذاك اليوم
لو أنّ الرّياح
أبطأت قليلاً فقط
لكانوا وصلوا:
مائةٌ وسبعةُ وأربعون مهاجراً
أحدٌ ما أحصاهم
واحداً واحداً
نظر إليهم
وجهاً وجهاً
وقبل أن يكتب
تقريره الصحفيّ الدقيق
أخذ لهم صورةً جماعيّة:
مائةٌ وسبعةُ وأربعون
وجهاً حزيناً
Arabic by Samar Abdel Jaber
Translucence (6)
Boats
are not the only way
to move bodies
across water
I skim the shallows
for each known thing
the fuckless days
grow quiet
my tongue as
flat and heavy
as a bloated
two by four
these houses we build
aren’t built
for living
English by Nicole Callihan
بين قارّتين (٦)
أمشي
إلى أن تستسلم قدماي
لكنّ البيت فارغ
ولا أودّ العودة
إلى الصّحراء
اليوم رأيت بيتاً
فوق نهرٍ
بين أشجارٍ شديدة الاخضرار
وضبابٍ خفيف
حلمت بأنّي أسير
على الممر الخشبي
المؤدّي إليه
بينما ينتظر خطواتي
أحدٌ
ليفتح الباب.
Arabic by Samar Abdel Jaber
Editor’s Note: These poems are part of an ongoing dual-language collaboration in which each pair of poems, written in response to the same photograph, appear to be translations of each other, but are not. Ultimately, the project reckons with notions of translatability and how language is shaped in both foreign and domestic spheres.
Nicole Callihan’s books include Henry River Mill Village (Arcadia Publishing, 2012), co-authored with Ruby Young Kellar, which documents the rise and fall of a tiny mill village turned ghost town in North Carolina; the poetry collection SuperLoop (Sock Monkey Press, 2014); and the poetry chapbook A Study in Spring (Rabbit Catastrophe Press, 2015), co-authored Zoë Ryder White and winner of the Baltic Writing Residency Chapbook Contest Award; and The Deeply Flawed Human (Deadly Chaps Press, 2016). Her new poetry collection, Downtown, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in 2017. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review; Painted Bride Quarterly; Forklift, Ohio; PANK; and as a Poem-a-Day feature from the Academy of American Poets. Nicole is assistant director and senior language lecturer at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and lives in Brooklyn. Learn more at nicolecallihan.com.
Samar Abdel Jaber Is the author of Wa fi rewayaten okhra (And There Are Other Accounts; Malameh Publishing House, 2008); Madha law konna ashbahan (What If We Were Ghosts; Dar Al Ahleyya Publishers, 2013), winner of the Palestinian Young Writer of the Year Award granted by the A.M. Qattan Foundation; and Kawkab mansey (The Forgotten Planet; Dar Al Ahleyya, 2015), published through a grant from SELAT, Links Through the Arts project, organized by A.M. Qattan Foundation and the Prince Claus Fund. Samar participated in the 2008 Arab Female Poets’ Festival in Damascus, Syria. In 2012, she won a prize granted by the Danish Institute in Damascus for the best poems that reflect the status of Arab societies after the Arab Spring and its effect on youth, and thus participated in the Copenhagen Literature Festival that year. In 2016, she participated in the Khan Al Fonoun Festival in Amman, Jordan. Samar holds a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Beirut Arab University (2008) and is currently working in Dubai. She blogs at www.summer-blues.blogspot.com and tholatheyyat.blogspot.com.
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