August 22, 2021

Meghan Sterling

AFGHANISTAN IS YOUR FAULT

and also my fault, the way I pretend the world
isn’t happening, organizing my closet by color, by
season, touching the soft fabrics instead of reading the news.
The way I’m back at my window where I watch
the neighbor’s pride flag’s colors reflect the mood
of the moment, how it was twisted when the pandemic
started, how it has been twisted since the pandemic
continues, but right now it is flattened, faded
in a late summer light that aches with coming autumn,
its stripes of many colors pulled taut by the wind
like a dress set to dry on a line, while the people of Afghanistan
are rushing the airports, they are swarming the tarmac,
they are surrounding the airplanes as if they can leap onto a wing
and be lifted away from what’s happening to their lives,
the way the women are facing a terror bigger than tears
or the death of the earth, looking into a hole where the sun
had just been blooming, wrapping themselves again in their black
that had gathered dust in the back of their closets, the way their black
is mourning for the textbooks that will be burned, the way their black
is mourning for being walled again in their homes, the way their black
is mourning for the sun as it dims and the earth grows cold
and all the birds give up their plumage to die beneath the folds
of their colorless wings.

from Poets Respond
August 22, 2021

__________

Meghan Sterling: “What is happening in Afghanistan is horrifying, especially for the women and girls. As a woman, I can’t grasp the terror of what is coming. This poem was my attempt to feel their fear.” (web)

 

Meghan Sterling will meet us this week’s Rattlecast before our main guest, Marcela Sulak. Join in live at 12pm EDT!

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December 1, 2019

Meghan Sterling

MAN SUBDUES TERRORIST WITH NARWHAL TUSK ON LONDON BRIDGE

It goes and goes. Another day
and I am in a mostly clean bathtub
enjoying quiet in the lavender-scented water
when you knock on the door—
Did you hear about the terrorist attack on London Bridge?
A man subdued the attacker with a Narwhal Tusk!
and giggling, you leave, letting that fill the room.
I lay back. Now I hear the occasional drip of the tap
and I let the scene unfold. A crowded afternoon. Brilliant blue sky.
Sudden screams, a man charging another with a Narwhal tusk.
The steel railing of the bridge, the November air.
People scattering, the chaos of extraordinary situations.
Smoke from a fire extinguisher, nothing in focus
except the tusk like a white light a man is lunging with,
an unwieldy foil. I imagine the feel of it in my hands,
the ivory helix, spots of decay, 5 feet long and 22 pounds.
Did you know, the original bridge is actually
out in Arizona somewhere? I say to no one in the quiet bathroom,
the water cooling. But I remember London Bridge
as it stands. I was 20 and looking over dizzy into the water,
people rushing behind me. London always busy.
All the lives lived hustling, trying to survive cold winters
over this bridge, over the Thames rough with winds,
hands cupping candles in fingerless gloves, or selling matchsticks
and other clichés of 19th century period films of which I am a devotee,
and I remember a handsome young man in a white blazer
nervously smiling at me as he rested against the railing,
and I have thought about him on occasion for the last 20 years,
as if he was a gem I was searching for
but hadn’t the courage to pluck out of the stream.
And I remember crossing bridges without fear
of smiling men or terrorists or knives,
passing by the Narwhal tusks mounted on the wall
of the Fishmongers Hall without registering them
as possible weapons. Probable ones.
O, the innocence of 1999. When Narwhal tusks stayed on the wall,
when London Bridge was just a way for us to cross the water
between City of London and Southwark.

from Poets Respond
December 1, 2019

__________

Meghan Sterling: “My husband interrupted me while I was taking a bath to tell me about this news story. He thought it was funny, but it brought up a lot of feelings for me—namely, about being a young woman alone in London, feeling safe on the London Bridge, and the sadness and absurdity of having to use an artifact like a narwhal tusk to attack a terrorist.” (web)

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