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Nostalgia Is Not the Right Word
​
after Thomas Sayers Ellis

 I want to begin with the bang
        its infinite starts
There were three families of us All pinned under
            glass, rubbing powdery wings before they
No dawn was like Zeus but purple like Pluto
Bruised
        Rejected & foreign
But how does a simile measure
               the current between here & there?
I want to walk through mythology but first
                   I have to walk through my ghettoized childhood
Put on the Reebok, the Sailor Moon watch
       The yellow council block, the balcony piled
with Aldi bags, Jamal’s swampy eyes
                  A wise man once said
       The warm thigh of Johnny     I am entropy:
I am
      Warmth is a contiguity of friction 
Where does it hurt? Where are you from—  
         What is your home? Who
I am trying to return to
I’ve never been    Stop saying shellfire—  
Often we drowned pigeons in the canal
by which I mean       
                   mostly we dreamt of bombs
Why is your hand like this
When did it   
        Every moth in my mouth tastes of years
without music    Madar’s knees, Mazar-e-Sharif, the sun
on my cheek, yes, it was
                soft-scented traffic… & then they
Now I have done it again
                      I let the line walk away from me
Like a childhood song not
                              You see, you see
       This is how it is about place
 Each one a genesis       I mean bombs
I mean bangs        Their little sparks—  
                    Their         His eyes
              Something about all those wings under glass
            This is how it is about us
You flee into metaphor but you return
             with another moth
flapping inside your throat
It curls itself
                from the black in your mouth
 whispering I’m sorry
           about these ghosts knocking
                               against your bones

​
by Aria Aber

Aria Aber is a recent graduate from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best British Poetry 2015, Lighthouse, Wasafiri, decomP, PANK, Connotation Press and others. She is the recipient of the Wasafiri New Writing Prize for Poetry and a fellowship from MIEL. She serves as a poetry reader for The Adroit Journal.
ISSN 2157-8079
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