|
By Matthew J. Andrews After clicking 'Play', please wait a few moments for the poem to load. Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, 2010 The Kurdish man is first. He doesn’t speak a language any of us can understand, so he plays a song with a hand-carved flute, a haunting tune that soars and collapses, so expressive I do not need his words. The Canadian woman is next. She is peace- hardened, older, her body riddled with bullet holes from guns not fired. In a bouncing cadence, as a teacher might, she sings in Swahili a song she learned around a campfire ages ago. The American man goes after. He is young, fidgety with optimism, eyes fixed forward. He reads a poem, a swaying free verse piece he wrote that afternoon, about the horror he now knows, and about the light beneath it. It is my turn. All eyes are on me, but I am frozen in the flickering of their fire. What do I have to offer this soul-soaked communion? What can I contribute to this assembly, this global congress of song? Matthew J. Andrews is a private investigator and writer from California. He is the author of the chapbook I Close My Eyes and I Almost Remember, and his work has appeared in Relief, Rust + Moth, Pithead Chapel and EcoTheo Review, among others. He can be contacted at matthewjandrews.com.
Matthew's other work on Foreshadow: Jonah and the King (Poetry, March 2022) Consider thanking our contributors by leaving a comment, sharing this post or buying them a book.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |