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Charif Shanahan
The open air had the predictable sparkle
After two months not only indoors
But flat on my back, waiting, mostly,
For the neck they kept cutting open to heal

So that when they wheeled me out through double
Doors and the tram passed across my field
Of view and the scattered strangers flecked
The white blur my eyes made

Like floaters after a long sleep, I felt,
Sudden in my plexus, the exact angle of loss
I had lived with when I lived here
As though it had waited for me to return so as

To enter me again, as though I had not
Lived four years without it, elsewhere, where
They say life is, regardless of where you are,
So that as the bells of the Fraumünster rang

From inside the steeples, the tail
Of the lake stretching out of view between
The hills on either side, I became,
As an actor becomes, animated, populated by

Someone else’s feelings, someone else’s spirit—
And now, a few years later still, I know
To ask if this complex of feeling, deep-frozen,
Waiting for me, was my actual life—

Not a portion of the life, not
A possible life, but my tangled and patient
Actual implausible resilient fucked-up life?
from the book TRACE EVIDENCE / Tin House Press
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“On Exiting Universitätspital…” appears in my new collection of poems, "Trace Evidence," which explores questions of mixed-race identity, sexual intimacy, and the legacies of transcontinental colonialism. The third and final section of the book—the one in which this poem appears—considers one’s relationship to time and the difficulty, or the impossibility, of inhabiting the present moment for individuals whose identities are liminal and shift across social contexts. 

Charif Shanahan on "On Exiting Universitätsspital Zürich, New Year's Eve, 2015"
Black-and-white photo of Yannis Ritsos at work
"Yannis Ritsos: The Greatest Greek Poet of His Time"

"When the coup d’état occurred on April 21, 1967, his friends advised the poet to hide, but he did not leave his home. He was arrested and detained at the Faliro Hippodrome and was later taken to the camp for political prisoners on Gyaros, later being transferred to Leros."

via GREEK REPORTER
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Cover image of Claire Wahmanholm's new collection, "Meltwater"
What Sparks Poetry:
Claire Wahmanholm on "Deathbed Dream with Extinction List"

"I love writing abecedarians. I love that they make me reach for words I would not ordinarily reach for; I love that they gesture at abundance without exhausting it, that they leave more unsaid than said. I love that they open the doors of my existing knowledge and invite me into the dictionary, the thesaurus, the encyclopedia, any number of archives. I love how democratic they are: even the trickiest, least common letter must be used, and the heavy hitters may only appear once." 
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