Three Poems from Roma Roam, by Nathalie Handal

Nathalie Handal’s ninth collection, Roma Roam, chronicles an unraveling after the discovery of a lover’s betrayals. These bold poems explore power, freedom, water, memory, and “how / we hold history in our splitting bodies.”

The speaker opens herself to the opacity of human connections where “passion can be a seafarer / a daily resurrection” and “faithfulness / a long hesitation.” Who — or what — do we betray when we roam other bodies? What roles do history, religion, art, and culture play in our infidelities? Rome stands as a crossroads of Mediterranean migration and diaspora — a symbolic center where cultures and civilizations interact and transform one another. What happens when the past and present, the city and the lover, truth and falsehood collide? Roma Roam offers a way of fathoming the enigmatic world, and our tenuous belonging within it.

Bethlehem – Nativity Scene 

Now being in Rome, I see there was harmony,
a mother played, and it pleased the newborn,
but you don’t really have passion for music, do you?
For who will own the sacred lyrics? Who will own the rights?
The window to the left, the window to the right,
won’t open, so you carelessly compose a broken Alāhā

Alāhā
Alāhā
Alāhā
Alāhā

 You were unfaithful for there is no mercy,
no grace, why surrender to the embrace,
stand in wonder, for who keeps the glory,
the peace, the holy, who gets to remember,
who gets to keep the sweetness, the way candy
tastes to a six-year-old, so you sing Alāhā

Alāhā
Alāhā
Alāhā
Alāhā

You have been here, others come, say they know more—
that’s the Christmas spirit. You hear their poems
like Tennyson’s wild bells,
see the nativity scene everywhere, shepherds and wise men,
but they don’t see you, maybe love is not joy,
it’s a broken Alāhā

Alāhā
Alāhā
Alāhā
Alāhā

There was a time, in this town of light,
we danced on limestones, hands interlaced,
some waiting for love like atonement,
others making love, telling stories
with their bodies like the rituals of rivers.
As doves moved, your breath exhaled Alāhā

Alāhā
Alāhā
Alāhā
Alāhā

They use your name as they want,
they don’t really know you,
but if they did, well, they don’t care,
the truth is it doesn’t matter
which they think you are
the holy or less holy Alāhā 

Alāhā
Alāhā
Alāhā
Alāhā

Maybe there’s a God
but all you’ve learned from love
is getting shot when you don’t love the same,
and it’s not by those who’s seen light,
and it’s by many who’ve been shot,
it’s a chilling Alāhā 

Alāhā
Alāhā
Alāhā
Alāhā

You told the truth, you touched
but it didn’t go right.
You waited: In nomine Patris,
et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
You stood before the Book of Psalms
with no other word but Alāhā 

Alāhā
Alāhā
Alāhā
Alāhā

*The Aramaic (Syriac) word for God is ܐܠܗܐ Alāhā. This poem is after Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah.”

The Metropolizians

We come from the close away.
We are an old Eritrean woman with a cross tattoo
on the forehead, symbol of beauty.
We are children who chat in many languages, play soccer.
We are 500 works of urban art.
We eat together as our laundry sways under the moon.
But once in Metropliz—we had no lights,
there were rats, rusting hooks, curing tanks, no life.
But unlike the old Fiorucci salami factory,
where pigs came alive and came out dead,
we came without a job, without a home,
and like the pigs on the mural
we set ourselves free and flew.
We are Metropolizians.
We are told, you will be evicted.
But art works are our soldiers, our shield, our cathedral.
We carried a photo, a stone, some soil.
We carried names and memories sometimes too heavy for boats.
We carried scars from wars from hunger from droughts from hurricanes.
We carried education degrees, now dried paper.
We carried the sea in our spine.
What is a person without a country?
In our collection of post boxes,
are the words altrove—elsewhere, altro—other,
we read, you belong to our longings,
and our longings are like others.
As I leave Metropliz, I think of 5Pointz
of Biggie’s Yo look, what he tried to tell me
as the train entered the tunnel leaving Queens.

* Museo dell’Altro e dell’Altrove, or the Museum of the Other and the Elsewhere (MAAM), Via Prenestina, 913, 00155 Roma, is located in the former Fiorucci salami factory, which ceased to operate in the mid-1980s. Advocate of this artistic barricade is the filmmaker and curator Giorgio De Finis. MAAM reminds me of 5pointz, once the mecca of graffiti in LIC, Queens, New York City. The buildings at 45–46 Davis Street started as the Neptune Meter factory in 1892, where water meters were manufactured.

Field of Mars
                          -after Muriel Rukeyser

I live all the wars.
Most mornings I am sort of sane,
then the news start demolishing my soul.
I get disrupted by calls and texts and emails.
I go for a walk to escape, but see a friend doing the same.
We have coffee, stay too long.
I start feeling anxious that I haven’t gotten to the page,
to write, and write off the constant wars.
In my poems, I try to imagine amity, to touch
my body and yours, who touches other bodies.
I try all ways to reach beyond you, beyond myself, to let go.
I see a thousand Jesuses pass by.
Perhaps they know where we can heal.
Perhaps they will tell us where to deck our dreams,
stay away from the rusty red planet, field of blood.
It’s cold there. Make the sun our sacrament instead.
As swords sway like a conductor’s baton,
we stop renting hearts and try to be in ours,
walking through Campo de Fiori,
and Piazza Navona with a gelato
between us, sweetening our tongues.