The villages of Algiers
Well, suburbs
Really, but villages
Is what is said
In French
And heaven
Knows, despite one
Hundred thirty years of
Colonization
Brutalization
Deprivation
The many Algerians
Still
Love French. Those
Villages team with men
At night.
At night, the women
Wait
Indoors
Behind doors, away.
Waiting.
But at night the
Men take the streets.
At night the men crowd
Streets, cut in
Front of traffic, clog
Cafes, stream
Toward the mosque away
From the mosque fill stores
But mostly
Mostly they
Squat
Sit, or just
Hold up walls.
They lean.
Stare. Talk. They watch cars
As they jostle and jolt
Watch other men
Walking, watch
The silence
The noise. Watch
Stars, the
Dark
Still buildings
The passing cat, the rhythm
Of the wind,
Watch the gibbous moon and
It’s cycle
The fullness, the waxing and waning
They watch
They witness
The villages
The suburbs
The streets
They watch
The dead.

Disconnected, alienated
uncomprehended, bended
sounds fill
push eardrums, runs,
aural chaos, linguistic pathos
confusion, fusion, apprehension
verbal exhaustion rules
grooves,
governs this immigrant’s life. Five years of coping
scoping, hoping, scraping, trying
to get ahead, get with it, get it on,
fit in. Find that
niche, riche, find that place,
misplaced, fast
pace, foundering, mapless,
GPSless, guideless,
uncomprehended, bended,
alienated, disconnected.

In Africa the lissome eucalyptus leaves
Sharply ovoid, a washed celadon,
Turn their silvery backs, yield, bend with
The promise of on-coming rain.
You taught me this
Sign, this tree-voiced prediction, long ago, among
The tenderly sloping, densely viridian hills
And heavy, somnolent, rolling fogs of Iowa.
And so, I turn my back. I yield, oh, how I yield.
But, you didn’t foresee, didn’t know
How, much later, my heart would
Flake and flay
How great sheets of myself
Would peel, would fold
Would slough off just like
The bark, the back of those massive whitened eucalyptus trunks, you
Didn’t, couldn’t foretell how this long union
Scars, clings, sinks so deep, tattoos itself so that eucalyptus-like, despite
Repeated rain lashings, leaf bowings, droopings and sun decimated leavings
My heart, my soul sheds, molts, reforms, renews itself and just as those
Sharpened leaves arch and curve and arc and sway
So I bend, I turn, I give in, I give in
To the chafing wind, to the scouring hurt, to
The on-coming African
Rain.

Delicate ochre haze
against dark mountains
separates receding
lines of luxuriant trees. These
valley vistas,
these suburbs, look
like an 18th-century set
design: the landscape
stepping back
one row
after the other in
distant views. Funny
how hanging contamination
gently showcases
nature.

I am walking
Again
Gently sloping two-lane highway
Graying asphalt with faded yellow lines
Curving
Curving into the
Distance
I feel it, this moving space
Endless promise
Stretching out extending
Air
Snaps cool
Against my face
Against chromium green bristling pines
A stand selling apples
McIntosh apples glowing knifesharp
Reddish-green skins
Apples piled high in heaps
Jumbled against rough wooden boards I buy
Brown paper bag of them
Get one out, rub
It clean on my shirt
Bite thin
Taut skin splits
Peels I taste
Acid pineapple flesh breaks
Tender white
Sky, a light slate grey sky covered
With high stratus clouds
And
I am sixteen
Again
Walking along
Empty road, eating apples
Heart lifted
With independence
By being out
Out
Sheltered
Under these endless
Dark pines and
The spreading
The deepening sky.

Precise scaffold silhouette
slants sharply across smoothed
cement. Narrow shadow shaft bisects
unfinished window, points
toward glowing sunlit
sliver of grey wall. Mundane
beauty, workday
glory unwitnessed.

it has become
cliché
we know
the once delicious
alien
names are
only
everyday
not
fiercesome
not
fiendish
not promises of
blood
drenched
daggers anymore.
these names were
standards
rally around the flag wear the flag
proudly
pin-striped lapel on porch on bumper
these names
fail
fall
flat
we must seek
something new flavored with
just the right taste of
wet
iron
new
rallying cry to
gather in
constructed
terror
behind
architecture
unknown
shelter
united deflected covered wrapped
against
this
shiny new promise
seductive new enemy more
toothsome
sharper
and
we are re
focused dis-
tracted
bound to-
gether
against
new pre-
fabricated
foe
with tasty new name
and we can watch mouths agape
drooling
fascinated
seduced
titillated
the new-fashioned series waiting for
next
exciting
episode
while outside
elsewhere
plump ravenous generals
masticate
digest
defecate
small
carcasses
empty
skulls
s­hredded
skin
under a
building-powdered
once golden
dome

Algiers, six
floors up but
still
the rich
odor of reused
cooking oil, of limp French
fries makes its
way to this
tiled top floor
balcony, an absolute sky
scraper by local standards. The
low whine of traffic
reaches me –
syncopated, punctuated
by a workman’s
hammer, an impatient
horn, the wail of a car
alarm, a quick shout
of greeting, of
anger. I
can almost see that
far away
in the distance
velvet mountains still
bluely rim
the fog-yellowed
sea.

Continent bound – water
encircled, I ache
for audible
effortless
mediocrity

Jabbered exchanges
fluid vowels
spill unrecognized and
still lap at
my yawning consciousness
Words now sink
never surface
Drown
unknown
Oral habitudes,
usually uncomprehended
Watered
speech
bubbles up, from
unfathomed
depths I am submerged
constantly
Subsumed
by misunderstandings

Watery morning
sunlight
filters gently through
browning oak
leaves nevertheless
another Algiers
rush
hour grips
convulses
disgorges
one
rattling car
after the
other.

Dirt clogged scrubgreen foothills
roll to meet obscured mountains,
veiled in translucent exhaust haze.
Terracotta tile roofs
top flaking white buildings
piled together. Escheresque
march down broken streets.
Traffic clogged arteries pulse
toward tangled city center
disgorging cars,
weary souls.

bored
of
bombs
listless
repetitive
strikes
dull
news lulled
heard
again
and again we
are worn
down
out
left
wait
(ing) for
some
thing
any
thing
other
than
this.

The North African morning light is thin and ****** and
Walking men are rinsed in the dim blush, they
Walk with heads down and
Cradle, eyes bent, contemplating, gently sipping
Steaming densely syruped espresso from miniature paper cups,
Bought from the nearest cafe. Their
Spreading hands are wrapped
Delicately around those doll-size paper
Cups (sometimes glass ones)
And still they walk, tasting tannic liquid
Courage, holding, with tender precision,
Candied black strength. I
Drink too, though because homemade, not
As strong a cup -
And now we both, the walking men and I
Tip heads back and face the newly purged
Light, emboldened by borrowed audacity.

It’s only six
thirty, but
night is already
heavy, thick,
black, dense.
We hurtle along
ink-dark twisted
roads, lined with
tall, promising,
never-lit
streetlights and feathery
bending pines. A young
man emerges suddenly,
out of spreading
darkness,
walking -
it’s always men
walking at night - he
wears somber
clothes, and walks
near the edge
of the broken, rising
pavement,
unaware. He is
illuminated
in a brief flash
by the angry head
lights of an
oncoming car,
then he disappears,
consumed by the
night. The only trace
he leaves is
the faint
incandescence from
his palm-cradled
phone.

My family sleeps, well
almost. Abdellah’s awake, sniffling
in the room he shares with
his brother. I make coffee
silently in the kitchen,
now my own thief,
cleaning coffee ***, turning
on stove stealthily
so as not to let him hear.
It’s not that I don’t want him
I do
but I steal silence, and
covet solitude
more.

I want to tell you this:
it is as though I care
to pierce to slice
have you see
my petrified indifference
flayed skin spread
but
I skewer myself
only
and you don’t notice
can’t notice
will not notice
couldn’t care
wouldn’t care
more
or less
and so I dupe myself
with my own baying
anger I *****
from gulping at scraps and feeling
fawning gratitude
for tidbits
I
am
your
dog
panting for whatever
is left
lapping it up
with slobbering tongue
nosing around
the floor where
I don’t belong but
where I allow myself
to be. I may
be your
dog
but I won’t
beg
anymore.

Out the sleek window
Of the sixth floor again
In Dely Brahim
The scene shifts back;
A long-forgotten actress, I’m placed stage front
A fantastically convoluted Baroque set all around
Vistas broaden behind me, into the distance
So many ornately painted side-wings stepping back
Over-constructed, swelling hills
Teeming with terra-cotta roofed houses; patched,
Faded scrub pasture
Flattened, stylized, staggered against
The distant scrim of a
Daintily picked-out, smokey gun-blue
Mountain range. This
Amazingly contrived
Mediterranean opera-stage set
Encloses me
And I strain to remember
My lines.

Death gapes
For all: the running
The embracing, the fearing ones.
We are all chewed,
Devoured. Surely some
Slip down
Its gullet smoothly, a coated pill,
With ease. But
Others gag
Before rotten,
Jagged teeth. Wedges
Slice esophagus, won’t
Digest. Heart-
Burn or come
Back up as bitter
Bile to be swallowed
Again.

I accept
only
wish
to change what cannot be
changed
delusions of
ecstatic
union
fade
smothered
under
silence
disinterest
triviality
joylessness
wouldn’t be minded
if the brief
glimpses of
affection were
less rare
but maybe
they wouldn’t be so
noticed
cherished
guarded
shepherded
into my secreted soul I
forget
on purpose
that which I cannot
swallow
learned to
eliminate
the day-
to-day
deflect
small building
damages
yellowing
psychic
bruises
or absorb
dead
(ening) shrivel
(ing)
cells of self
I wanted
to share
but now
can
not.

My black inked voice
Sticks, hesitates, stutters
But these blank pages
Still listen uncomplainingly.
They forgive my
Broken, whispered, catching
Words and remember despite
Fraying leaves, shattered spine, rusty cover.
This book, this stalwart pen, this frail retreat.