Danielle Badra
Poems from Like We Still Speak
Station
Grandmother helped me realize we are meant to be carriers of light, not bearers of darkness. Who mourned Lebanon and innocence the smell of thyme and sesame slow roasting in the oven. The smile on my face before communion wafers and wine reminiscent of her last supper in Upper Galilee where figs were sticky when ripe and fish was blackened on both sides and she ate the eyes first. She sold her gold wedding ring to pay back debtors during the Great Depression. Grandfather laid car parts for Oldsmobile in Lansing to feed his family. He dreamed of Greater Syria and the streets of Aleppo where he gave milk to strangers under full moonlight.
Fire
give me an ancient song
and I’ll give you a forbidden light
syllables that slide from front teeth
as backdrop for gods to grow colors
from pinpricks into calligraphic prints
of my mother
she is not the sun
she is what comes after: you
are made in her image
are dancing in her clothes
my wild hair
in the spring wind glows
I carve shadows at the ground
beneath your feet
Ode to Onion
Onion is the only thing I want to eat.
My great uncle ate raw onion dipped in sugar for lunch.
When my tears are meant for my ancestors,
I’m more Lebanese than Michigander.
My tears taste like red onion saltwater.
I lick them from my hands, a favorite meal.
A meal I’ve shared with my sister before in a pillow fort.
She cooked more often than me.
I always did the dishes in the evening once the sun set.
It is easier to focus on the moon crest out the kitchen window.
I prefer the light of the moon to other forms of far light.
If light must be distant let it be moonlight.
Flashlights in the coat closet.
Shadow puppets across a backlit wall.
We were static after rubbing ears with withering minks.
We were learning to curate our own culture.
America
that night
in the eyes of my country I was waiting with bottle rockets
I am one of those people with illegal Indiana fireworks
who have darkened and dirtied with bang snaps and sparkler swords
America I was waiting for the new moon
that to at least an empty cicada shell
one man unlit lightning bugs
I am a threat I ignite the summer sky
I wonder if when hot air hits heavy breath
he knows I’m beautiful and dangerous
I Was Told to Break the Cycle
and it was violence beckoning violence to come back again
stuck in an ache for more ache and aching for someone to suffer
like meat ground up in a meat grinder still needs more grinding
in our teeth the gristle of muscles we wanted to forget
the fear we feared for repetition of the same sad mistakes
in our throats an obvious scream for someone like me to echo
we refused the refuse of our inheritance of a pain passed down
to go on this way to go on this way to go on this way
Get the book
Conversation and memory are at the heart of Danielle Badra’s Like We Still Speak, winner of the 2021 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. In her elegiac and formally inventive debut, Badra carries on talking with the sister and father she has lost, often setting her words alongside theirs and others’ in polyphonic poems that can be read in multiple directions. Badra invites the reader to engage in this communal space where she investigates inheritance, witnessing, intimacy, and survival.
Purchase Like We Still Speak
Danielle Badra is a queer Arab-American poet. She was raised in Michigan and currently resides in Virginia. Her debut poetry collection, Like We Still Speak, was selected by Fady Joudah and Hayan Charara as the winner of the 2021 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize and is published through the University of Arkansas Press. Her poems have appeared in Guesthouse, Cincinnati Review, Mizna, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Split This Rock, Duende, and elsewhere.
Learn more about Danielle and her work at daniellebadra.com
