loose strife [Somebody says draw a map]

Somebody says draw a map. Populate it with the incidents

of your childhood. Mark the spot where the lake receded

after a winter of light snow. The stairs on which someone

slapped you. The place where the family dog hung itself

by jumping over the back fence while still on the dog run,

hours later its body like a limp flag on a windless day.

Draw a map, someone says. Let yourself remember.

In the refugee camp a hundred thousand strong

draw the stony outcrop from which you could no longer see

the plume of smoke that was your village. Draw a square

for the bathroom stall where Grandpa hid each day

in order to eat his one egg free from the starving eyes

of his classmates, an X for the courthouse where you and he

were naturalized, a broken line for the journey. Draw a map,

Jon says. Let it be your way into the poem. Here is where

that plane filled with babies crashed that I was not on.

Here is where I was ashamed. On the second floor

at Pranash University the people wait their turn. Have you

drawn your map, Jon asks. He has rolled up his sleeves.

Forty-five minutes to noon the Prince stands up and says

that the monks must be excused. We watch them file out,

saffron robes as if their bodies have burst into blossom.

Draw a map. Fly halfway around the globe. Here is the room

next to the library where you realize how poor your tradition is,

the local people with poetic forms still in use that date back

to the time of Christ. Tell us about your map. Explain

how these wavy lines represent the river, this rectangle

the school-turned-prison where only seven

escaped with their lives. This is my map. This star the place

where I sat in a roomful of people among whom not one

was not touched by genocide. Every last map resplendent with death

though nobody knows where their loved ones lie buried.

How many times can I appropriate a story that is not mine to tell?

The woman stands up and says she is not a poet, that she

doesn’t have the words. She points to a triangle on a piece of paper.

Here is the spot where she found human bones in the well

of her childhood home, and how her mother told her

don’t be afraid because it was not the work of wild animals.

Copyright Credit: Quan Barry, "loose strife [Somebody says draw a map]" from loose strife. Copyright © 2015 by Quan Barry. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Used by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Source: loose strife (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015)