​Dirt
by Philipe AbiYouness

​​it is the most beautiful thing
               when strangers in Beirut    ask me for directions
 
they say I look like this land        
               and suddenly my hook nose       and half burning     own me back     
      
to where my mother pulled the city lights
               to dance          and now I am her heel     steadied by this dirt        
 
                            and now I am all the joy          that became drums   and oil    
 
               in place of
 
                               what was left burning               in a nation’s stomach
 
                                                                        sometimes I forget I look like anywhere
 
 and it is the most beautiful thing   

                               how we gather at tables        and say     God rest his soul

and answer
and God bless your dead

Es’haia tells me everyone loved my father
               he tells me to remember     I have a home here    and throws back the Arak
 
since I started hearing your name
               ​in the mouth of many priests         I look the ocean in the eye


            I trip over roots in the ground          I watch dogs chase the empty wind
 
                                    like an olive      is promised of hunger

it is the most beautiful thing
               ​when the lights cut out        and nobody stops for the dark

                                    tempting the absence of     to rob even           the sound of our throats

it is the most beautiful thing    I mean every mountain

               ​how even the earth here

                                                                  is making toward the sky
 
roads exhaling        hands up high above the city
 
car horns calling in the rain
    their shrill so stubborn


               ​some birds up and leave the land    and some birds stay
 
                           ​some birds become
                                         ​songs in the lungs of the living
 
                                                                     and it is the most beautiful thing

how our dirt never forgets

               ​and our dirt takes us back      
 
                                    and they asked me about     the most beautiful thing

                  ​ in my parent’s country            and I say maybe       
 
                                                                                    life is ugly              unbitter my mouth with it
 
I am told this is what       brave people say
but I still wake up hungry
 
            and honestly        somewhere    everyone I love is always laughing        and here        
 
strangers    find strangers       
            familiar enough to say

                        what home do you come from
                                       and what is your family’s name? 

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Philipe AbiYouness is a first-generation Lebanese-American poet and educator. His work is published or forthcoming in PANK, Sukoon Magazine, Fugue, Maps for Teeth, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. Philipe will be starting his MFA at Emerson College this fall. 

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Summer 2019