After Aurora Masum-Javed / After Joy Harjo
When we used to walk to a middle point
between our homes to share a single ciggy,
maybe put together a couple loonies
for a beer, you would take the longer block
so we were closer to 50th where I lived than 43rd
where you did. I’ve been there for so many of your scars,
miss their forming more and more. That time
you ripped open your finger to your palm
and still had the laughter in you as Stash's octave
climbed the back seat window. And, still
later in the ICU, it was in your feigned panic as you told us
we were stealing the instruments and supplies
the nurses might need to patch you up. That time I passed out
in Resh’s car and you and Rook tried to pick the lock
but the car you were breaking into wasn’t the one I was in
and Resh’s keys finally worked when you climbed another
level in the parking lot to where I was. All that time
you were bleeding from the back of your head
because our enemies from the neighbourhood
pulled up drinking and driving in a jeep and
bottled you in the street. You were bleeding
and I was sleeping peaceful and 20 years later
people still jump you late at night and it scares me
because I used to think it was cuz you were too beautiful
but now, the slurred speech in your texts
and the last time we shared space, I couldn’t catch it:
even as I claim I’m on this earth to listen. You reach out and I
only text back when Ren is double-worried. I’m grateful
you think I’m beautiful. What a Hari,
you would respond to my Leo thing to say (as I say now
in a world you can’t reach). I wish for you
that the bottles miss your head, that any knives you face
no longer cut you. I am sorry that I have been
one of those knives. I’m sorry for any knife-blade
stories I gave another to harm you with. I still hurt
for the friends of ours you’ve hurt. I still get mad
running into that photo you took of me passed out
when I Google my author photo. Yesterday I finally searched
for the second to check the first, and your eyelashes
were everything the image could hold. I still
get mad feeling like the world wants for you to hurt
more than your share. You still drink. Past leaning. I want to
every day. I pray the bottle doesn’t get into your head,
even when I know it is. You don’t need to hold me
in the form I used to be. Me and my big ears, we’ll cross
the longer block toward where you live now,
so the next time we share a cigarette’s time
it’s closer to where you’re safe. I wish you
rest. I wish you knew you deserve to love your body
as instrument for transmitting all that thrums. How long
you were afraid to become your father. How many times
I’ve said before that that’s who you’ve become—
I was wrong. Both of you are more than inheritance
inflicted. Sometimes I wish I could sweep the ground
in front of you, so your eyelashes don’t have to,
so your eyes can know so much more than dirt, so you see
you don’t have to be the broom.
Contributor Notes
Hari Alluri is the author of The Flayed City (Kaya, 2017), Carving Ashes (CiCAC, 2013) and the chapbook The Promise of Rust (Mouthfeel, 2016). An award-winning poet, educator, and teaching artist, his work appears widely in anthologies, journals and online venues, including Chautauqua, Poetry International and Split This Rock. He is a founding editor at Locked Horn Press, where he has co-edited two anthologies, Gendered & Written: Forums on Poetics and Read America(s): An Anthology. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from San Diego State University and, along with the Federico Moramarco Poetry International Teaching Prize, he has received VONA/Voices and Las Dos Brujas fellowships and a National Film Board of Canada grant. Hari immigrated to Vancouver, Coast Salish territories at age twelve, and writes there again.
