Winnower
Poems
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,
