Notes on Resilience

included in New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Saba)

Akashic Books

Haunted equally by her father’s Somali homeland and by his absence when he travels alone for work to Somalia, the speaker in these poems brings together fragments of memories to forma coherent, complete puzzle of selfhood… Resilience, says Jama, is to create value and meaning where it has been denied. To mourn, understand, and move forward. because we must.

Hope Wabuke, from the preface

Notes on Resilience

Mom writes Dad is fading.

And that is fitting,
for tonight’s moon is leveled
into a perfect half.

Peace is not so much a presence
as an absence—
what is not there
can no longer touch you,
whether to harm or hold.

You’re through and so full of wind
even the leaves have left.

A student of mine once said
Father is like mountain.

I didn’t understand.

She said Father again
and again in her language
but I couldn’t produce the sounds.

What is it to lose a father?
How can a mountain disappear?

Safia Jama