Elegy

In shadows we do our drinking slow, grieve brave whispers of memory. Who will take us in? Where will we go?

To a thick book of nightmare, a winding hole, flesh of desert, scaled in arid misery, and deep shadows where we do our drinking slow.

You tell me of your country, a pretty bowl of scratched and bloody maps no one will read. How it did not take you in. How it told you where to go.

Women with guns in Asmara, raped in Durko, falsely married in Khartoum, jailed in Segeneiti. Dunes of shadows roll and roll, as we do our drinking slow,

as your face opens and folds in cliffs of sorrow: Homelessness, hunger, tomorrow; but tonight, this warm brandy will take us in and show us where to go.

You hold my hands, tell me: Pain has a way to knowwhat we don’t. Let me go. I will keep good company with soothing shadows, we do our drinking slow. You take me in. You show me where to go.