This is from the lovely City Lights Pocket Poets Series. The book is Nine Alexandrias by Semezdin Mehmedinovic. Mehmedinovic is interesting in his own right given his experiences in the attempted genocide of his people in the Balkans.
What struck me about this piece is the universal dislocation that's a recurrent theme in so much of the art that I like. There a sense of knowing you're never going to be home, you're never going to be comfortable. But that's OK. It just is.
Going from one American coast to another,
I saw lonely people, sorrowful and angry,
I saw good people, and even those transmitted the
Only warmth they had to the ring on their finger
And I believe I've preserved a sorrowful expression
Within me for the sorrow of a continent
Just like a train preserves the memory of a galleon
Since every message reaches me across my feet
What I mean is, I'm a political
Emigre every trip I take
Always on ground treading water
I feel like I shouldn't be here
And that I'm standing on the planet Diagonally
Like those kids drawn on greeting cards put out by UNICEF
Always on ground treading water and train preserving the memory of the galleon are my favorite images in this piece.
And now, to the not so beautiful, the features list for a phone system.
