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Is Osama bin Laden your cousin? No. But I have a cousin named Osama. You should get to know him — he loves Americans and their questions. You're from Iran right? Or is it Iraq? I always get them mixed up. Let me make it easier for you. Think weapons of mass destruction. Think George Bush. Think lies. Think war on terror. Sorry. War of terror. How did you survive the war? It must have been so hard for you and your family, living under such a brutal dictator. Sometimes I forget who was brutal. I forget whose side brutal was on. Brutal kept showing his face on the news, so I assumed he had friends on both sides. You must have so many stories! Did you talk about any of them in your college essay? Oh my God, you would get in everywhere! Actually, you know the Common Application, where you go to apply for college? You can attach files to your submission. I tried to upload some weapons of mass destruction, but for some reason I just couldn't find any. Do you consider yourself Iraqi-American? It's a label I struggle with. Some days I wake up not knowing whether I'm the conquered or the conquerer. In 2003, a rifle was pointed at me. In 2008, we moved to American, and suddenly I was the one holding it. This time I was pointing the rifle at my old identity, asking it why it always mispronounced English, why it thought there was a difference between freedom and democracy, asking it whether it thought Arabic was written from right to left to confuse the West, and asking it if the Mississippi had ever heard of the Euphrates. In an interview with CBS News on September 12, 1996, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked the following question: "We have heard that half a million children have died [in Iraq]. . . . Is the price worth it?" She replied, "We think the price is worth it." I recently found out that Secretary Albright teaches at Georgetown. I was rejected from Georgetown. My application essay was 500 words long, but I wanted to write 500,000. Growing up Mama always told me, el maerof yergos iegol al gaa oja. "Those who can't dance always say the ground is crooked." Mama, it's hard to dance because the ground has 500,000 cracks whispering under my feet. They're telling me their names, ages, stories, and asking just how many cracks a medal is worth.  Photo by Ramin Khatibi on Unsplash
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A world of dew, And within every dewdrop A world of struggle. ~Kobayashi Issa Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection: Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action-- Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.  Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash  Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash Caminante, son tus huellas el camino y nada más; Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. Al andar se hace el camino, y al volver la vista atrás se ve la senda que nunca se ha de volver a pisar. Caminante, no hay camino sino estelas en la mar. Traveler, your footprints are the only road, nothing else. Traveler, there is no road; you make your own path as you walk. As you walk, you make your own road, and when you look back you see the path you will never travel again. Traveler, there is no road; only a ship's wake on the sea. translated by Mary G. Berg and Dennis Maloney  For BP Nichol ___________________ Nowadays I listen only to duets. Johnny Hodges and The Bean, a thin slip of piano behind them on this page on this stage craft a breeze in a horn. One friends sits back and listens to the other. Nowadays I want only the wild and tender phrasing of "NightHawk," its air groaned out like the breath of a lover. Rashomon by Saxophone. So brother and sister woke, miles apart, in those 19th century novels you loved, with the same wound or desire. We sit down to clean and sharpen the other's most personal lines —a proposal of more, a waving dismissal of whole stanzas — in Lethbridge in Edmonton you stood with the breeze in an uncomfortable Chinese restaurant in Camrose, getting a second cup at The Second Cup near Spadina. I almost called you this morning for a phone number. Records I haven't yet returned. Tapes you were supposed to make for me. And across the country tears about your death. I always thought, someone says, he was very good for you. Though I still like, Barrie, the friends who are not good for me. Along the highway only the duets and wind fill up my car. I saw the scar of the jet that Sunday trying to get you out of the sky. Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkings. An A and an H, a bean and a breeze. All these twin truths There is bright sumac, once more, this September, along the Bayview Extension. From now on no more solos I tie you to me  Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash I read it hear in your very word, in the story of the gestures with which your hands cupped themselves around our becoming — limiting, warm. You said live out loud, and die you said lightly, and over and over again you said be. But before the first death came murder. A fracture broke across the rings you'd ripened. A screaming shattered the voices that had just come together to speak you, to make of you a bridge over the chasm of everything. And what they have stammered ever since are fragments of your ancient name.  Photo by Josè Maria Sava on Unsplash If there were no emptiness, there would be no life. Think about it. All those electrons, particles, and whatnot crammed in next to each other like junk in an attic, like trash in a compactor smashed together in a flat block so there’s nothing but plasma: no you no me. Therefore I praise vacancy. Vacant lots with their blowing plastics and teasels, vacant houses, their furze of dust, vacant stares, blue as the sky through windows. Motels with the word Vacancy flashing outside, a red neon arrow pointing, pointing at the path to be taken to the bored front desk, to the key-shaped key on the dangling brown leather key holder, the key that opens the vacant room with its scored linoleum floor a blear-eyed yellow its flowery couch and wilted cushions its swaybacked bed, smelling of bleach and mildew its stuttering radio its ashtray that was here seventy years ago. That room has been static for me so long: an emptiness a void a silence containing an unheard story ready for me to unlock. Let there be plot.
 Photo by Todd Trapani on Unsplash My Body Is a Vessel ~after Mary Oliver ______________ for the sun and a home for the salt air, buried in concrete and dust, and risen again -- as if my skin remembers its spring song, no longer a young and dying thing but at last, winged. Bring my body back to slow rivers. What's the word for flock of little joys? I think it was blessing.  photo by Prateek Gautam on Unsplash Kindness becomes more apparent in dark times, kind of like how our hearts seem louder, more alive, in quiet places. — acts of kindness as a source of light Today is my dad's 70th birthday. This is one of his favourite poems. Happy birthday daD! — Love, neJ Photo by Andreas Dress on Unsplash Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. ~Robert Frost  Photo by Redd on Unsplash
 This is a series of poems by Thomas King, Canadian writer and photographer, of Cherokee and Greek descent. This is from his first collection of poetry, 77 Fragments of a Familiar Ruin. I'm not going to record myself reading these. I'm not First Nation, and this is not my story to tell. But I'm presenting it here because I think it's important for others to read. The coyote is often found in First Nations storytelling. He is the trickster, and uses humour and deception to rebel against social conventions. 6.
25.
48.
60.
 Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Of those so close beside me, which are you? God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, And learn by going where I have to go. Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Great Nature has another thing to do To you and me; so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go. This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go. ~Theodore Roethke |
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Jennifer Snowdon ©2022 ✉️ breathe@jennifersnowdon.ca
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