Copyright © 2022 Sanna Wani
Published in Canada in 2022 and the USA in 2022 by House of Anansi Press Inc.
www.houseofanansi.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
House of Anansi Press is a Global Certified Accessible™ (GCA by Benetech) publisher. The ebook version of this book meets stringent accessibility standards and is available to students and readers with print disabilities.
26 25 24 23 22 1 2 3 4 5
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: My grief, the sun : poems / Sanna Wani.
Names: Wani, Sanna, author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2021037554X |
Canadiana (ebook) 20210379456 | ISBN 9781487010843 (softcover) |
ISBN 9781487010850 (EPUB)
Classification: LCC PS8645.A55 M9 2022 | DDC C811/.6—dc23
Cover design: Alysia Shewchuk
Text design: Laura Brady
Typesetting: Laura Brady and Marijke Friesen
House of Anansi Press respectfully acknowledges that the land on which we operate is the Traditional Territory of many Nations, including the Anishinabeg, the Wendat, and the Haudenosaunee. It is also the Treaty Lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit.
We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada.
I write simply so that my friends love me very much
and that those who love me very much love me more.
—Gabriel García Márquez
Masha’Allah
after Danusha Laméris
I am eager for any mouth to open
that soft word, “what God wills.”
Masha’Allah your hands are so gentle.
The baby is so happy, masha’Allah.
Masha’Allah we all have enough to eat.
So much joy I’ve carried has soured
easily as plums under nobody’s eyes.
Every language must have this seal.
A word to protect our breath
from the world’s unruly hands,
luck’s staggering gait.
Our children have grown up to be so kind, masha’Allah.
Masha’Allah the birds are singing in the fields again.
Masha’Allah the rice is alive in the grove.
How lightly we learn to hold each blessing,
as if it were the wind, trembling at an unlocked door.
And still we wait for it, ceaselessly, the way a child would,
patience pouring into each word, from one mouth to the next.
Today and Every Day, Without You
I don’t care
about the flowers, which I merely invented
to give myself another reason to address you.
— Aleksandar Ristović
is long and sharp tastes
like milk and salt a teacup where
you sat like so many trees is now
dry we drink like tired fossils
from the rock of our want from the dregs
of green and pink flowers hungry
for the sun like the roses in the garden
or the dream I had where you became
the sky where I met you in the un-
hurried blue of an afternoon daisy
who stands to greet me the sun
the breeze sliding down the letter h
until I am home waiting for your call
my mother watching the water sit still in
the garden light bouncing continually
through our hands the marble of the door
bright bronze and broken o hungry flowers
I am trying to show you how quiet the slope
of my desire sits on the hillside endless
buried there you are in every beautiful thing
wearing the light again I am watching
the trees again the sky is calling
for quiet the morning like everyone’s eyes the door
shut tight only the daisies unfurling watching as I leave
Memory is Sleeping
Sometimes remembering refuses us. Sometimes I’m
a shoreline the water of memory drags its palm across.
— Billy-Ray Belcourt
In a daisy field. In a garden. In a graveyard, in the sun,
its valley. In the sound of nothing. Your mother and father,
two trees in the distance. In the distance. In the sound of the whistle,
someone banishing you again. A hand in the distance, a greeting.
In a greeting, a question. How old are you? Six? Seventeen?
In your body, ageing, an immediacy. In a flower, a new arm.
Eat the apple. Your lips redden. The person you were, you
are always becoming. Their breath spilling over your neck.
A breath, a shore, a whistle, a knife. Where is the wind?
In love, the wounds you tend. A wound, a door, a lake, a fence.
Whatever is perpendicular to your becoming. Time is a terrible statue.
The tide will eat its skin. To prevent heartbreak, practise disappearing.
All the eels are missing. You are an expert in missing. A mouth,
a lock, a gate, a key. Open your mouth and throw the word yet
into the river. Into the river, your face leaking glass. A face,
a flood, a crystal, a dove. Someday, you will be in love again.
The sun, a wound on your windowsill. Light falls
on your dreams. It sounds like someone knocking.
Bilabial
after Myung Mi Kim
murmur/murmured/murmuring
to separate the fire from the crackle
meander/meandered/meandering
to find money on the sidewalk
mourn/mourned/mourning
to drain the ocean from on...