share


Social Contract

Formally, I and the undersigned—

What? Use, like Mama said, your

imagination if you still have one

where scripts still sway like spring-

hipped hula girls on Ford dashboards,

where cursive still wraps its tail

around your right hand like a pet

corn snake, where syntax still

stutters, lurches into a sin, a sandwich,

a pleasured refrain; if that much of you

remains, you’ll see them, us, me

(lonely as a broken doorknob),

the possible contours of silent

manifestos.—do hereby request

you speak for us only if you

speak for us. We realise

there is that which we do

not see. We realise there is

that which you do not see.

We realise knowledge

is fragile as mucous membrane,

but we don’t want much.

Only not to be taken,

 

only for hope everywhere—

wildflowers, voice, water.

 

We will pay—have paid—

with ocean bodies, river minds.

 

Let us watch the water rise,

smash stone.


ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

is a doctoral candidate studying poetry at the University of Cincinnati. He earned an MFA from the University of Miami, where he was a James Michener fellow. His poetry has appeared in a variety of literary journals.

READ NEXT

Essay

Issue No. 20

Notes on the history of a detention centre

Felix Bazalgette

Essay

Issue No. 20

Looking back at Harmondsworth as he left, after 52 days inside, Amir was struck by how isolated the detention...

feature

June 2014

Writing What You Know

Simon Hammond

feature

June 2014

In the summer of 1959, a headstrong but lovesick English graduate took a trip to the hometown of his...

Interview

March 2017

Interview with Bae Suah

Deborah Smith

Bae Suah

Interview

March 2017

The Essayist’s Desk, published in 2003 and written when its author Bae Suah had just returned from an 11-month...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required