Habitus

Radna Fabias, David Colmer

• Publisher: Phoneme Media
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781646050994
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Subversive, visual, and bold, Curaçao-born Dutch Radna Fabias' explosive debut collection Habitus marks the entry of a genre-altering poet. Habitus is a collection full of thrilling sensory images, lines in turn grim and enchanting which move from the Caribbean island of Curaçao to the immigrant experience of the Netherlands. Fabias' intrepid masterpiece explores issues of racism, neo-colonialism, poverty, and sexism with a heartbreaking rhythm and endless nuance.

Broken into three parts ("View with coconut, " "Rib, " and "Demonstrable effort made"), Habitus explores the profound struggles of melancholic longing, womanhood, religion, and migration. This ambitious, powerful, and compassionate collection has emerged, cheering on ambiguity, fluidity, and a lyrical ego on a quest to find its home.

rib

Enormous room. Ophelia. Ihr Herz ist eine Uhr.

Heiner Müller—Die Hamletmachine

inspection on arrival

roughly 5’7” if the measuring instrument compacts the hair

springy hair (fine, curly, stiff in places, changeable, thirsty)

forehead: not prominent

eyebrows: black—partly joined—

eyelashes: not counted, she’s got them, they’re dark

eyes: large, dark brown, conspicuously present as is

nose: conspicuously ethnic

lips: almost no pout, corners of mouth rise fairly regularly

teeth: slightly damaged by biting hard objects, wisdom teeth removed by force

tongue: damaged, blames love

chin: depending on angle of appraisal, single

throat: intact

shoulders: hard

back: burdened

collarbones: not prominent

breasts: marked by savage human hands—no visible damage—

birthmarks: god’s spit

belly: round with promise, not with child

buttocks: fairly curved—less bulk than the bloodline might predict—

haunted pelvis

hips: broad

legs: muscular from military operations

feet: flat, always touch the ground

arms: heavy

heavy-handed

incarnation

in the beginning was the hole and the hole had already been dug

unless observation leads to guilt, i was not an accomplice

she—the lioness—sighed and i was there

(inhumanly tender, searchlight eyes)

she wrapped me in a golden blanket that had been fashioned to look noble but was actually made from the leather of a dairy cow that had been milked dry then brutally slaughtered for my wellbeing and warmth

her breath caught she called it love it seemed a lot like fear

the gold blanket cracked and everyone could see the skin of the slaughtered cow

highly embarrassing

tears were shed

it was not clear if those present were crying because of the cow or

the violence involved or

about my fingers, which were apparently made to play pianos

nobody there could afford

we were sure that one of them was crying about the symmetry of my eyebrows

the source of the rest of the sorrow was less transparent

let’s just say there was a lot and it was briny

she—the lioness—was lying on a bed

the bed had become an island in a sea of unidentifiable tears

someone was swimming away from me

the midwife protested

nobody was paying attention to my umbilical cord but somebody said

this is mainland

always stay on the mainland always keep

your eyes on the horizon always look

for signal fires

i had other people’s tears in my ears

i couldn’t hear properly, so i always looked for fire

when i wanted to go home

i let myself be molded

that’s how the first misunderstanding arose after three or four moldings nobody knew what my original shape had been

i could never become myself again and no one recognized me anywhere

when they found me—years later—the headlines said

besmirched exotic beauty

(well yeah what is beauty)

found at the heart-black bottom of the well

the journalists forgot i had a mother

and my mother too and her mother before her

they wanted to know what happened

i was invited onto a quiz show to choose the best answer to that question

i chose “persistent patrimony”

that won a balding provincial fortysomething a suitcase containing 50,000 banknotes

currency from a country that no longer exists

the host asked me to turn around

the balding provincial gent used both hands to shoot the useless banknotes at my ass

meanwhile the host sang a song about the beauty of holland in the rain

the laugh track was on

a blond woman yelled that it was just what i deserved

her fury, metropolitan and delphic

the cameraman was just in time to capture a tear

he too forgot my mother and her mother and her mother and the absent fathers

while pressing the microphone up against my lips

the bald man kept shooting banknotes at my ass

the laugh track was still on

it made for two minutes of excellent television

adam washes ashore

sunday morning on the church square

in the city—autumn leaves on the ground

the authorities have abolished

coincidence—i pick him up i pat him

dry i keep him for his own sake around

him i write a sentence his backpack fits into

adam stretches drowning

has done him good how clean

he is he has six masks he is

wearing one he’s saved

from the desert where he was

alone still intact and dry

(great-)grandmotherly advice

dead bodies are heavy

you’re better off not trying

to transport them on bicycles over the damp slippery christmas-lit cobbles of a medium-sized western city where people are walking through shops in search of things to...