It’s like wishing on a thimble.
THE FLICKER BOX
Kalma is home to a big flicker box.
On our farm there was no such thing.
A flicker box—
lighted,
loud,
blaring sound.
A flicker box—
nailed high up
on an iron pole
so that everyone can see
what flickers out
from its shiny square face.
Flickering,
flickering.
Pink people.
Laughing herky-jerky
Flickering,
flickering.
Noisy colors I’ve never seen.
Shapes that whirl.
Teethy mouths
speaking English.
Up-close heads
with hay hair,
talk-talking,
looking right at us,
somehow seeing
past the gleaming screen
that covers the whole front
of the big flicker box.
STUCK
Waiting in the water giver’s line,
women talk.
They talk of the sun’s heat,
and mosquitoes
and firewood
and onions,
and the everywhere bodies at Kalma,
more of them each day,
filling this camp.
They never talk of tomorrow
or any day after this one,
or what will happen to the
everywhere bodies once they come.
“No home for returning to,” they say.
“Here we stay,” they say.
They say:
“Our villages have been burned to ash.”
“Our crops and animals are gone forever.”
“Our farms, no more than memories.”
One elder woman,
skin deeply creased with age, says,
“Kalma is a sharp-eared wolf
that cannot be held or released
from the grip of an uncertain hand.”
Some give this elder woman
the courtesy of their attention.
Others turn their backs.
They don’t want to know
what they already know.
This woman is as talky-talk as the flicker box.
“Living in a camp binds every part of us,” she says.
“You cannot leave,
and you cannot enter.
Either way,
the wolf could bite you,” she says.
She explains,
if someone
unrecognized
wants to come inside Kalma’s boundaries,
they risk being harmed
by guards who patrol,
and ask,
“What is your purpose?”
Even when your reasons are
good and right,
you could meet trouble if the guard
thinks differently.
Other elders join in.
They say:
“The one who leaves does not return.”
And:
“We cannot go back to life as it was.”
They say:
“It is dangerous beyond this place.”
And:
“The Janjaweed lurks. Wild hyenas wait. “
They say:
“Fat-tailed scorpions want human food.”
Even though
this is what they
say,
my heart asks:
“What else is possible?”
FLOWERS
On gateposts, they grow.
Sprout from anything
thorny
that will let them cling.
Sudanese flowers.
They come in all colors:
white,
green,
red,
yellow,
even black.
So light,
like feathers,
these bountiful blooms.
Sudanese flowers.
When a breeze snatches one up,
it blows
along the road,
tumbling,
bouncing,
catching the toes
of a child who kicks it away.
They pop up everywhere at Kalma.
You can pick them,
collect them,
carry them home.
No matter the season,
they keep blooming.
They don’t even need water.
These flowers,
so pretty
for anyone who finds beauty
in crumpled plastic trash bags,
rustling,
crinkling,
snapping
as they clutter our paths
in a garbage parade.
Sudanese flowers:
trash-bag scraps
littering
our
lives.
BLOWING SMOKE
There is a girl, older than me,
but still a child.
There is a man,
older than the girl,
leading her around like she’s his lamb.
Muma sees me watching.
“Her husband,” she says.
The man,
her husband, is smoking a cigarette,
letting its haze form a veil
over the girl’s gaze.
Doesn’t he see his wife wince?
Does he hear her cough
when he flicks off the final ash,
then hurls
the brown, smoked-down butt?
The still-lit stub
lands at the front of her toob,
then drops.
The man summons his saliva,
spits a stream.
How rude!
NONSTOP
The flicker box never sleeps.
It’s lit all day and night.
Pictures play
behind its screen.
Today someone has made it go silent.
The flicker box is on.
The flicker box is alive.
The eyes
that look out
can see.
But there’s no sound
coming out
from the flicker box.
Everything is trapped
inside the flicker box.
I wonder if those hay-haired people
with big teeth and pink skin
feel the same as me:
Shut in
behind their own
mounds of sound
that can’t come out.
MOON-TIME TERRORS
Leila wakes with a whimper.
She trembles,
stretches her warped limbs,
aching to make them longer.
Her spine
curls in on itself,
the stem of a gourd.
“They’re back again,” she cries.
“Moon-time terrors.”
It’s still the deepest part of night.
If only dawn were coming sooner.
Leila could watch
for the promise
of sun.
But I can tell by the mottled hunk of butter
in that high place,
and by the sky’s ebony cape,
that we must endure
more darkness.
UNWELCOME
Sayidda Moon’s single eye
shines brightly.
Though our village tradition tells us
the moon’s fullness
is a blessing—
that her proud-lady moon face,
none of it hiding,
is good—
at Kalma,
our customs have become
a muddied swamp
of rituals from
tribes and villages
throughout
Sudan.
Our beliefs about Sayidda Moon’s power
have been stripped of their meaning,
smacked off
by heartache’s hand.
Tonight the full moon
is unwelcome.
Her light,
piercing the dark,
burns a hole
through any chance for peaceful sleep.
The sky ball’s flash
of white
makes Leila’s bad dreams
brighter.
“Make them go!”
Leila’s cries bring Muma,
who settles next to my sister,
hums quietly,
rocks her crooked-limbed girl.
Leila starts to sleep
as her evil dreams flee
through the open eyelid,
ragged hole
that lets in the night’s only light.
GAMAL’S GRIEF
At Kalma,
Gamal misbehaves
more than before.
He is often two ways at once.
On the edge of picking a fight,
but also ready to play.
Today he’s found a bike tire,
turned it into a Hula-Hoop.
Circles it ’round
his bony-boy hips,
showing other kids how.
But then he goes from fun to mean.
When another boy wants
to give the bike-tire Hula-Hoop a try,
Gamal plays a trick.
Hurts him.
Instead of securing the rubber ring
at the boy’s waist,
Gamal,
with two hands,
jams
the white-rimmed circle around the
boy’s neck—and yanks it!
When the child shouts,
and calls for his mother,
Gamal is the one who starts to cry,
then speeds off screaming,
wounded.
TANTRUM
“Amira, talk!”
Gamal stamps his foot.
“Talk!”
I wish I could
just talk.
Gamal,
impatient,
throwing a fit.
The burn welts on his neck
have turned to pocked, blotchy scabs.
Dried citrus skin on a little kid.
He brings his face right up to mine,
shoves me with his shoulder.
As hard as I t-r-r-r-y-y-y,
my voice won’t come.
Not even to push off Gamal.
My whole throat—pinched.
Tightly tied.
I work
to fight
the knot
pushing,
pressing,
pump-pumping
snarled air
from deep inside
my belly’s belly.
No use.
No sound.
Both Gamal’s feet start up in a protest.
Stomp-stomp!
Stomp-stomp!
Old Anwar,
passing by,
sees.
Rushes up,
holds Gamal firmly from behind,
pins this boy,
who is bucking.
Gamal’s whole body,
stiff.
“She won’t talk!”
Old Anwar says,
“Leave Amira alone.
She will speak when she’s ready.”
Gamal surrenders
to Old Anwar’s hold,
loosens.
Old Anwar says,
“Boy child, if you must hear talking,
if you must stomp with both feet,
come with me.
We’ll march to the prayer tent
and talk to Allah.”
MISS SABINE
She arrives with two sacks,
oddly shaped,
hoisted on slim shoulders.
A melon-sized pouch,
filled with lots of something,
rattles from inside.
The other bag is flat, stiff, hard-edged.
This lady’s toob,
so beautiful.
A shock of hot purple
surrounding freckled ginger skin.
She sees me looking,
not once blinking,
as she walks up to the flap
that shields the entrance of
our prayer tent.
My gaze will not leave
that rattly pouch,
or that flat bag.
Mostly, though,
something makes me
want to see what’s inside
the clattering sack.
She’s wearing a medallion,
this lady—
SUDAN RELIEF—
telling us
she’s a visitor to Kalma.
Next to her is an intake officer,
also watching the lady’s strange things.
“My name is Miss Sabine,”
says the lady with the shock-purple toob.
Miss Sabine’s hair:
braided ropes
spilling,
blowing out
from both sides of her toob’s
hooded cover.
Miss Sabine’s eyes:
light,
the color of sand,
flecked
with green glints.
Starshine,
those eyes.
WANT
A bouquet of curious faces,
some dusty,
some polished
with sesame oil.
Girls and boys
crowd to meet Miss Sabine.
Elbows, shoulders,
poke-poking,
shove-shoving.
Wanting.
KNOWING
Leila is in the bunch,
her elbows the sharpest of all.
Her tiny limbs
weaving the slimmest spaces.
She’s the first to reach Miss Sabine.
She taps at the rattly bag,
plays with it.
The intake worker presses Leila back.
“Wait,” he tells her. “This lady has traveled all the
way from Khartoum, Sudan’s capital.”
Miss Sabine lets my sister enjoy
the strangeness of her pouch,
the odd
flatness of her bag.
Leila shakes both Miss Sabine’s hands,
meeting her properly.
The other girls and boys follow.
“Welcome, lady.”
“Shukran, thank you.”
Miss Sabine speaks beautifully,
in a voice that is
spice and sweet
at the same time.
I hang away from the group.
I let them move ahead.
I watch.
Miss Sabine sees me right away,
picks me out
among the many children at Kalma.
Her goz-colored eyes land
on me.
There is knowing
in those starshine eyes.
Miss Sabine.
Filled with understanding.
She doesn’t try to make me speak.
This lady lets my silence be.
Miss Sabine.
Sudan Relief.
THE RED PENCIL
She kneels,
wriggles free
from the pouch at her back,
loosening its straps.
Then—
in one fast snap,
Miss Sabine flips the clanking bag
upside down.
And then—
out from its drawstring mouth
spills a clattering bunch of pencils,
a yellow-coated cluster
of writing sticks
with sharpened charcoal tips!
All the children scramble,
grab,
reach.
I blink.
I want one, but I’m too slow.
Right away, the yellow sticks
are gone.
I’ve never left Miss Sabine’s sight.
She reaches over the other children
to me,
presses a pencil into my hand.
Curls my fingers
around its middle.
“Yours,” Miss Sabine says,
all with that knowing.
I’m quick to thank her
with a slight bow.
Thankfulness
wraps me
so firmly in its palm,
that I don’t truly see what I’m holding.
Then—
I look.
My pencil is not like the others.
I have a red pencil!
And,
there is more from Miss Sabine.
She reaches deep
inside the second sack
to slide out a stack
of paper tablets.
Paper as bright as our farm’s wheat