Friday Finds: ‘I Sleep in My Inkwell and Wave to the Distant’

“I Sleep in My Inkwell and Wave to the Distant” by Moroccan poet Zakia el-Marmouk — in translation by Jennifer Jean and Amir al-Azraki — appears in the May 2020 issue of Poetry:

Zakia el-Marmouke has published five poetry collections, and is the director of the Association of Creativity for Peace. She lives in Morocco.

The poem opens:

To those who enter the fire with boats,
who touch heaven with kites,
who stuff roof holes with clouds,

who hide under beds
whenever the road stutters
in the throat of footfalls entering fog—

of footfalls that never return
from the checkpoint
which only sends back bodies;

The rest is on the Poetry Foundation website and in the May 2020 issue of Poetry.