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    The Lost Arabs
    The Lost Arabs
    The Lost Arabs
    Ebook112 pages54 minutes

    The Lost Arabs

    By Omar Sakr

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Award-winning Arab Australian poet Omar Sakr presents a pulsating collection of poetry that interrogates the bonds and borders of family, faith, queerness, and nationality.


    Visceral and energetic, Sakr’s poetry confronts the complicated notion of “belonging” when one’s family, culture, and country are at odds with one’s personal identity. Braiding together sexuality and divinity, conflict and redemption, The Lost Arabs is a fierce, urgent collection from a distinct new voice.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAndrews McMeel Publishing
    Release dateJan 14, 2020
    ISBN9781524860479
    The Lost Arabs

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      Book preview

      The Lost Arabs - Omar Sakr

      For Candy Royalle,

      gone too soon but never lost

      &

      my brother, Mohomad,

      without whom I could not do what I do

      Here We Are

      People don’t seem to understand.

      They say no, look, hell is over where the grass is

      greener. Or no, look, it’s where blood drenches

      everything. Nobody wants to reckon with

      the truth of this place. A palace in hell is still

      in hell. Freedom of movement in hell is still—listen,

      hell is any place where someone is being tortured

      and we have been here for the longest time.

      Contents

      Here We Are

      Boys with Their Pins Pulled

      As the Bombed City Swells (in a Viral Video)

      Hanging Dry in Athens

      House of Beirut

      This Is Not Meant for You

      On the Way to Sydney

      How to destroy the body slowly

      Fridays in the Park (or how to make a boy holy)

      Ameen

      How to be a son

      Sailor’s Knot

      Arabs in Space

      What It Is to Be Holy

      How to destroy the body slowly (2)

      Breath

      Birthday

      Ordinary Things

      Factoids

      Chances

      Instead, Memory

      Out on the Way to Melbourne

      A Beautiful Child

      Choose Your Own Erasure

      Federation (Square)

      The Lost Arabs

      Where God Is

      Searchlight

      Every Day

      Do Not Rush

      AT THE SITE OF THE FUTURE MEMORIAL

      AT THE SITE OF THE FUTURE MEMORIAL

      AT THE SITE OF THE FUTURE MEMORIAL

      AT THE SITE OF THE FUTURE MEMORIAL

      AT THE SITE OF THE FUTURE MEMORIAL

      Waiting for the American Spring

      A Moratorium on Cartography

      Tinder

      Among Bloody Oracles

      Self-Portrait as Poetry Defending Itself

      Extermination

      Landscaping

      How to sleep

      Citizen of—

      How to destroy the body slowly (3)

      The Exhibition of Autobiography

      Kennel Light

      No Goldblum, No Matter

      How to endure the final hours

      How to destroy the body slowly (4)

      Self-Portrait of What Graces the Night

      Blues

      Nature Poem

      All of Us (Who?)

      Galaxies of Road

      Meaning

      As the Raven Flies

      Great Waters Keep Moving Us

      Heaven Is a Bad Name

      In Order to Return

      Acknowledgments

      Boys with Their Pins Pulled

      Call it what you will, this place,

      like everywhere else beneath the sun,

      burns. The boys spread through it

      like fuel before the fire, torn khakis

      muted in the dust kicked up by the fuss.

      They are yelling or the earth is,

      and the noise is flame.

      The residents

      always leave a residue. A spreading

      stain, like these boys, if boys they are.

      Everything has a name. Some are erased,

      others misplaced, gifted and taken

      away, or replaced. Here we have

      little stacks of mapped bone,

      they are kicking a ball while the men

      search what used to be homes.

      Shins

      bruised, knees creaking, little bronze

      busts gleaming, the ball bounces, if

      ball it really is. Rejoice regardless,

      someone is scoring a goal, though

      the posts are always shifting and

      so are the players, both the living

      and the dead. Neither is winning,

      despite the din,

      the hammerblows

      of this forge, making both boys

      and grenades indistinguishable.

      People scream—look out, duck,

      and any thing might be sailing in

      the air, a body or a ball or a blast.

      Everything loses its form in the end.

      A child, frenzied, falls. The others

      surround him, a furious sandstorm.

      In this nothing space,

      you never know

      what you’ll be bending to recover,

      whether your fingers will meet skin,

      plastic, or metal. No matter, the result

      is always the same: a name erupting.

      As the Bombed City Swells

      (in a Viral Video)

      And the streets become rivers of no

      longer rushing water, wide and flat,

      dark and calm, a wending mirror

      of sky snakes its way between

      each small building of mud brick

      and stone. A man drifts

      on a door

      of a home or sheet of unclear metal,

      his handmade keffiyeh chequered red

      and white around

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