Three Poems by Lynda Tavakoli

 

GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG *

 

When you say that you just can’t look

 

Look

 

and rinse your eyes

with hearts that

fall and rise and fall

until Allah finally admits

their stillness into martyrdom

 

Look

 

and see how suffering

fails to penetrate the consciousness

of a world where the umbilici

are severed with stones

and limbs dispensed with Gigli saws

 

Look

 

and know that weed fields

never feed the starved

nor a coverall of PPE dispel

the clenching teeth of children’s misery

and that all roads lead to death

 

Look

 

and wonder that enough

just never seems to be enough

and when we turn away

we become complicit

by our own abstentions.

 

Look

 

 

*Götterdämmerung:

‘Situations of world altering destruction marked by extreme chaos and violence’

 

 

RIGHT OF RETURN

 

In the dustbowl of his palm, a key.

 

He knows its searing

coolness on his skin,

its metal imprint sewn

like a tattoo into the fabric

of his dreams, while

the parched mouth of a lock

screams in a door

somewhere in the past,

waiting for a homecoming,

 

waiting for a miracle.

 

 

HARDCORE

 

Children lick plastic bags like lollipops,

tongues stretched into corners,

tastebuds alert for the tang

of a honeyed moon

while trucks carry cargo to the sea,

a stew of rubble and bones,

foundation for a too-late promise

built upon the splintered remains

of the disappeared.

Lynda Tavakoli lives in County Down, Northern Ireland, where she facilitates an adult creative writing class and is a tutor for the Seamus Heaney Award for schools.

A poet, novelist and freelance journalist, Lynda’s writings have been published in the UK, Ireland, the US and the Middle East, with Farsi and Spanish translations. She has been winner of both poetry and short story prizes in Listowel, The Westival International Poetry Prize and runner- up in The Blackwater International Poetry Competition and Roscommon Poetry Competition.

Her poems have also appeared in The Irish Times, New Irish Writing. Lynda’s debut poetry collection, ‘The Boiling Point for Jam’ is published by Arlen House and includes these three poems about the different aspects of war.