Exiles of Eden

Ladan Ali Osman

• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781566895538
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Women in Poetry
• Index: Literature

Exiles of Eden looks at the origin story of Adam, Eve, and their exile from the Garden of Eden, exploring displacement and alienation from its mythological origins to the present. In this formally experimental collection steeped in Somali narrative tradition, Osman gives voice to the experiences and traumas of displaced people over multiple generations. The characters in these poems encounter exile's strangeness while processing the profoundly isolating experience of knowing that that once you are sent out of Eden, you can't go back.

III

“Think of Me as Your Mother”

For Mohammed el Gharani, a juvenile held at Guantánamo for seven years

It’s the Ides of March and I have too much longing. Lions and gales replace speech. My mind breaks in a stone courtyard. It echoes as if played from turrets. They admit me. They put my clothes in a bin and search my skin for marks, cuts, and bruises; verify my eyes, hair, toes, and knuckles are black. They remove the string from my hoodie so I won’t make a noose of it. I’m too tired to laugh about that. They offer me rice. They say, The rice is good, and watch my face. They think they know Africans. I say nothing. They give me medicine, two kinds. I get free and yell: I’m BLACK! I’m black I’m black I’m black I’m black I’m black I’m black I’m black I’m black I’m black and I’ve never been to a wedding! After the medicine, I keep seeing my black and yelling: WHAT IS THAT WHAT IS THAT WHAT IS THAT WHAT IS THAT? They don’t answer. A woman tells me to Move it, bitch. She’s pretending a toy keyboard is a lie detector. I bump her hands and she has to start all over. After the medicine, I can see my black and it can’t stop talking. It says: I’m not a demon. I’m a ghost. They’re doing the wrong rituals on me. They took inventory of my Keds, my Dickies, my ass, but I’m still found without shoes or sheets. My chin stays bruised, and a sore in my mouth makes me remember my wisdom teeth surgery when I was seventeen and I had my first Muslim doctor, and he made a mistake and gashed my cheek. To keep from crying, he bade me to stop crying, even though I wasn’t. They’d given me cackling gas. He cooed: Everything will be ok, everything will be all right, everything will be ok, everything will be all right. I screech: I love myself! in my best Kendrick voice, spin like my feet are arabesque. They shoot me. After that medicine, I stop rapping on tabletops and go to my bed. The mattress receives me. I think of dark hair on a soft belly. The blanket hugs me. I think of my baby sister sleeping on my mother’s back. I stay in my bed all day and miss all my prayers because the bed says yes and yes. I want it to say no so its yes and yes is real. Can you rape a bed by sleeping stubborn in it, even if its springs tell you to get out? Tell my mother to bring me some grease and my pik, to hide my hot hair curler in her skirt. I already know my hair better be laid when I lie in this therapist’s face and tell her: I just got confused. They release me with three brown paper bags. All their handles break. They want me to look crazy in these streets but I just hum Badu in the parking lot and on the bus, break the high note: Pack / light. Every city built by the water is way too turnt. From Chicago to Istanbul, the thin caterwaul of stray felines, from midmorning to dusk. The geese that flew nowhere all winter holler in a knotted field at a devilish hour. Then there are gunshots. Police cracking ribs. The volume is up too high, too high in black ears. What do you do when a whole city is dog-whistling? A woman calls her young son motherfucker. His blink is blank. They face each other, hard-eyed. They have trouble translating the Quran into English. Hell is: the burning fire. Hell is: pain of mother losing child. In many places on earth, both definitions hold at the same time. I took my medicine, both kinds, and don’t yell out the window: RISE! like dust in a Maya Angelou poem, and the voice of a kid reciting it. Rise like Fela’s consorts when they were tossed out the compound windows, or like Maathai, or Mandela, or anyone whose knees or shoulders and skulls were clubbed in a dank prison. I wish I could take you into my belly. I think it’s the only safe space for you. Come into my womb. You might find cinder blocks and mixed metal. You might find teeth and discreet ejaculations, and rancid tears and salvaged bits of scripture. Come into my placenta, my electric water via dream submarine. I will throw the key into the ocean. I am infinitely generative. You’ll find your grandson guarding you. When you’re ready to leave, he’ll call to you: All the best, goodbye goodbye.

Boat Journey

Sunday afternoon on a city beach.

No sand, slabs of manufactured stone.

I watch two blondes, maybe sisters,

Inflate a raft. They use a bicycle pump.

One tries to assemble two paddles,

Gives up, puts them in her bag.

The one on the pump removes her top.

She ...