Winnower. Aaron Brown

      Winnower

      Poems

      Copyright © 2013 Aaron Brown. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      isbn 13: 978-1-62564-486-2

      eisbn 13: 978-1-4982-7101-1

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      for Minda

      Acknowledgments

      I would like to thank the following literary journals for publishing these poems:

      Illya’s Honey: “Africa to Europe”

      Kodon: “Sea Burial” and “Taxi #442” which appeared as “Yassin”

      North Central Review: “Automaton Man (A Life)”

      The Pub: “On the Chadian Civil War”

      Warscapes: “Memory Across Ocean”

      Windhover: “Evacuation Ebenezer”

      My thanks also to Minda Brown, Eric Kozlik, and Will Fargason for revision help.

      Invocation

      The woman bent to gather grain onto the woven straw,

      piled the millet in the center, then elevated the shallow basket,

      hovering it five feet above a cracked ground. Her parched hands

      quivered to support before she let gravity draw the seed down,

      down to a pan of purity. In the wind, the chaff wandered as I did along

      the rutted road when I first saw her, the woman on the plain

      with no hut or tent in sight. I longed to join her in sifting

      memories, watching the refuse of bullets, lies, loss melt away—

      to glean the ripeness of belonging: the steaming shai, the afternoons

      conversing with friends of a past life, hard to distinguish in the haze

      that swirled around her, enveloped her till she and all my visions disappeared.

      If I will find her again, I must wander this road through a land

      not fully mine but more of me than anywhere else.

      Memory Across Ocean

      I have been shielded from the suffering

      of earth’s most silent heroes:

      the aged woman

      stooping low to boil her tea,

      on a crude black grill underneath a tree;

      a man pushing himself through sand

      with his gnarled hands,

      crippled legs folded in between—

      his trail stretches for miles behind;

      or the smoldering homes of lives

      scattered like some shrapnel—

      once released there is no returning.

      The smoke rises from the capital

      and its citizens mill about with whatever

      memories of the old life in hand;

      taking their chances past the police checkpoints,

      braving the overflowing bridge to another country.

      In another country, I sit with a pen.

      Somewhere across oceans of water,

      oceans of sand where my life began

      I had everything to dispose of,

      though my people had nothing.

      They watched their country

      in one day rise up in smoke,

      in flames that I could board

      a plane to escape, listen to the engine

      hum my soul away to where

      contemplation is the only means

      of return.

      Sarihat, South of the Dunes

      The herd of camels encircles our village. The beasts shift silently on their feet with the moon giving birth to their shadows. We sleep across a mat laid out on the sand-grass. One man mumbles something, another ventures out into the dark to relieve himself. Still, others remain awake to muse about the spirits that follow you at night, spirits you turn to never see.

      Finally, the dawn dew seeps into every fiber of my clothes, every dead blade in the grass mat, and I am bathed into wakefulness. I lie still as the men perform ablutions, washing with vigor their feet and arms and hands. They join together to pray toward the sunrise, to the bustling Mecca in another world. One of the nomads walks to the nearest camel and empties her of milk, bringing the full bowl to us. We each draw from it and pass it on.

      During Kharrif

      We held the mangos in our hands,

      the skin ripe and firm, and sliced

      until we had a plateful of gold.

      We puffed out our bellies as if pregnant

      and laughed, talking politics and soccer

      over glasses of mango juice.

      Outside, rainy season winds skittered

      twigs and hadjlij seeds across the earth,

      a thickened cloud hovered like soot

      over the horizon, threatening to spill its

      entrails upon the leaves outside my door.

      The yard would erode, the bricks disintegrate

      in a wash of sand and rain—a deluge

      that could not drown the whir of the blender,

      the scoop of spoons in the sugar jar.

      Brokentree

      Where all who wanted rest would come,

      the once-mighty haraza tree lies shattered.

      By the shores of the dry river,

      it rose to a lofty height