The deeper we live into the post-ISIS, post-pandemic, post-Trump present, the more dream-like and remote the world I once lived in seems. Who was that woman who rushed from Paris to Istanbul to Bulgaria and back, who took a series of buses to the far reaches of the Datça Peninsula to meet a friend, a lover, who she planned to meet again in the Caucuses, who thought she could just go on living this way, moving freely through an almost-borderless world, friends everywhere, democracy a given, the future an endless stream of possibilities, love the only good reason for doing anything, her own energy and mobility and luck things she sometimes forgot to remember were gifts? This week in the news, Netanyahu is attempting to forge the most right-wing government in the history of Israel by twisting political procedures and the rule of law to form a cabinet of convicted criminals. A far-right domestic terror group in Germany was caught plotting the overthrow of the democratically elected government. Voters in Italy have elected a direct political descendent of the fascist Mussolini to lead them. Britain is reeling, economically and politically, from having shot itself in both feet with Brexit. There are mass protests by women in Iran and Iran is executing political prisoners even as it makes a show of suspending its notorious morality police. Indonesia has criminalized sex outside of marriage. And the war in Ukraine rages on, fueled by Putin’s hubris and the fortunes kleptocracy has built. And in the U.S., despite all the good Joe Biden has quietly done, Trump refuses to go away, with his politics of hatred and bigotry. How do these larger currents affect my life? On a purely selfish, practical level, it’s harder to travel now, and more expensive, and there are places that no longer feel safe to me, especially as a woman who prefers to travel alone. Those friends of mine who were also always in transit have, as I have, struggled to know where it is they should be, at last, where “home” might finally be. I worry for the safety of my Jewish beloveds, my African-American beloveds, my gay beloveds, people of every color everywhere, children and women especially. Because none of us can take democracy or her own safety for granted. Perhaps I was wearing rose-tinted glasses throughout many of the years of my life on the road, failing to see or choosing not to look too closely at how flawed the world around me was, how full of suffering and corruption. Although, really, I never looked away from those things; it’s just that the beauties I saw everywhere, the kindness and creativity and love that I met everywhere along the way, always shone brighter for me, and harder. To read now the poems I wrote as the world was shifting around me, or as the lens through which I viewed my own life in the world was shifting, or both, is to re-inhabit a lost innocence, to mourn its loss, and to hope for it again — if not for myself, for the younger people I love. Nasim Luczaj is one of those people — a brilliant young poet and artist and DJ and translator and who knows what else she’ll become. I’ve known her almost since she was born (to one of my dearest friends) 25 years ago, and she’s never ceased to astound me. I’ve read her poems since she started writing poems at the age of five. Nasim lives in Glasgow now, and she asked me last year to submit to an issue she was guest-editing of the U.K. poetry journal Wet Grain. She asked specifically for unpublished sections from my long poem-in-progress, Reign of Embers. I was happy to oblige. And I was thrilled to get my contributor’s copy of Wet Grain a few weeks ago, to see how beautifully the journal is put together, and to read Nasim’s comments on my work — maybe the most insightful and eloquent critique I’ve ever gotten. So, I share with you here the poems published in Wet Grain, along with Nasim’s comments, and a link to Wet Grain, should you want to order a print copy for yourself (or submit your own work!) If you’d like to read previously published sections of Reign of Embers online, I’m including links to those sections, too. I’d be happy to hear from you in the comments. Stay well. Love, Cecilia From Wet Grain: Cecilia Woloch’s Reign of Embers, the opening sections of which have gone on to win the prestigious Pushcart Prize, is a river with no sign of stopping, an assured abandonment of floodgates, just as injustice and violence will not be tamed or stop flowing. Learning to face new conflicts, news damning and damless, what has been taken for granted surfaces, a glinting ghost. We didn’t know the world we loved was ending. We didn’t know how much we loved that world — The sections featured in Wet Grain loop back, sunward, brushing against past ease. The bliss of this innocence appears in the offhand of cities bobbed between, until –. In the smooth of its water, splinters appear and lodge. Time is newly mapped, split into when the world was not at war and a now we must learn to digest. Though the flutter of a summer dress or heart seems wrung by what happens, we must float somehow. Lyricism helps the facts down, and though bred in contemplation, none of the shock of finding oneself alive in a world that loves death is dulled. Nasim Łuczaj (from Reign of Embers) XXX. (March 2: Merve, in Istanbul, via Margo, in Paris) My city is bleeding, she writes, My dreams are shattering. Another bombing in Istanbul, this time on Istiklal Street, near Taksim, where last summer I walked with my friend down the long sweep of avenue at dusk, past the fish market, passage of flowers, past the old embassies, palaces, shops, passing an alleyway where we turned to watch a small Gypsy boy playing guitar — or was it a drum? or a Syrian boy? — then turned back into the lights and noise again, the street teeming with tourists, with refugees, with women, like us, in summer dresses, with women in flowing veils, with men selling trinkets and smoking cigarettes, calling out to us as we passed, all the restaurant terraces packed with people pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, laughing, the music coming from everywhere. And where did the stranger stand among the crowds on Istiklal yesterday, shouting, God is great, as the bomb went off, – There is no other God but God – as he blew himself apart? Metal shards flying, shattered glass, twisted wire burning into the flesh of passers-by, shoppers for flowers, children who last summer ran beside the tram as it made its slow way down Istiklal Street, trying to jump on board as it passed — all those who could not run quickly enough from the blast falling on Istiklal yesterday. Two American Jews among those killed, or four American Jews — which isn’t to say they were targeted, which isn’t to say they were not. My city is bleeding, my friend in Istanbul writes to our friend in Paris, who writes to me — three women sending the dream of language through the ether on small blue screens — My dreams are shattering. Someone who might not want you dead might want you dead on Istiklal. XXXI. (Errata: No, it went like this —) Once, in the breezes of Istanbul, in the blue evening breezes, not long ago, I crossed the Galata Bridge on foot in a summer dress, with my friends. Men leaned over the parapet, fishing, some with their small sons beside them, and women were free to pass — myself and my friends, in our summer dresses, mothers and daughters in scarves and veils. There was the call to prayer, there were gulls and, behind us, the crowds on Istiklal, eating and drinking and making music, selling whatever there was to sell — a city of traders, since ancient times, a city of merchants, still, of the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar, of cathedrals and temples and mosques. We were free to stroll as the air grew dark. We were even free to dream of love. How I dreamed of love in that summer breeze, in that summer dress. How wrong I was. Even in your dreams, you won’t be safe, a young man screams, setting off the bomb, blowing his own young body apart (his untouched body, young) dreaming of paradise and revenge — a stutter, a blast, glass shattering. But let me believe this has not happened yet. Let me turn back, in that summer dress, in the evening breeze off the Bosphorous as I crossed the bridge with my friends. Were we not innocent, once, in Istanbul, was the city not made of prayer? XXXII. (Poem for Daybreak, Datca) We didn’t know the world we loved was ending. We didn’t know how much we loved that world — how I could fly from Los Angeles to Paris, fly from Paris to Istanbul, from Istanbul take a bus to the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria and then another bus back again, fly south to Dalaman, catch a bus heading west to Marmaris, then a dolmuş to travel the length of a wild emerald-green peninsula — fifty miles in Meltem wind, cliffs falling away on either side — the blue-green Aegean below, below, the blue-green Mediterranean — all the way to the sleepy town of Datça where we met in the dark street and kissed. Everything seemed still possible then, and we lived those days by the sea in a soft breeze and believed we’d found paradise: the lame goat tied to a tree on the hillside where we made love in the back of your jeep; the small dog that followed us through the town to little cafés where we met friends for tea; how you whistled a tune by Bregoviç across the table from me as I wrote — Remember, remember this. We swam in both seas and both seas were golden and on moonlit nights we climbed onto the roof to be nearer the stars. “You have a home here now,” you said, and we planned where we’d meet again — in Berlin, or in Paris, perhaps, or high in the Caucasus mountains, deep in the green of the singing world. We weren’t thinking of bombs or coups. We weren’t thinking of death being everywhere. Although, even then, the bombs were falling, refugees crowded the buses and stations and Ataturk airport was full of assassins bearing strange passports, speaking languages I had never heard before. Even then, attacks were being planned and governments were falling, left and right, to the right, and those taking power into their hands were taking that world away from us. Still, there was music in the streets those nights, the sky filled with gulls and the call to prayer. I still believed I could just keep going. You still believed you could go for days without washing the sea out of your hair. XXXIII. (Datça, Summer 2015) When the world was not at war and the lame goat was tethered to a tree there, on a rocky hill, in the moonlight where I and my friend who loves to sing made of the shadows a kind of bed but did not sleep — it was not a dream, nor was the morning, nor was the breeze that made of each room another room. We were passing through our lives, there was no time, and for whole afternoons we did not fear death. We did not buy jewels from the wooden stalls that lined the beach, although we walked at dusk among them, touching lightly the polished stones. We wanted for nothing, we ate the fruit that was set before us; we sipped our tea. The lame goat healed. The rope was cut. As I left, I promised that I would return and then I kissed my friend goodbye in the same street where I’d kissed him hello when the world was not at war. XXXIV. (On the Beach at Lesbos) So, where has the moon gone now, that was so high and bright before? Teach me to listen, I pray, a little shadow of wind in my hair. But I’m already listening, from afar — the sky filled with satellites, with stars. “Where is home,” a woman asks, “for any of us? Where is home?” Somewhere, men dive into the sea to rescue children from sinking boats. Somewhere, other men stand on shore, counting the cash they’ve made. And this is the world, says the Lord. The bare feet of children in the cold. https://www.wetgrainpoetry.com/about http://www.theamericanjournalofpoetry.com/v1-woloch.html http://www.theamericanjournalofpoetry.com/v5-woloch.html .
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