הוטליין  |  hotline think

2016

Collaborators: Xi Jie Ng,  Anke Schüttler, Spencer Byrne-Seres, Anupam Singh, Zoe Zitzer, Erika Dedini, Kim Sutherland, Eliot Feenstra

Rhonda Ahmed, Libya                                                                       

Maxamuud Maxamed Yaasiin “Dheeg”, Somalia

Love That Doesn’t Dissipate

Love that doesn't dissipate -
Did I swallow it?
I'm taken up into the sky
delivered through the dust storm
it says to me to stay aloft.

Did it sway me with unlikeliness
still awake and so distracted
did it deny me sleep?

Love that doesn't dissipate -
did it seek me out so easily
refuse me sustenance
secure me with a strap
send me soaring into coming clouds?

Spellbound in morning
I seek no nurse, find no surgeon -
has it sunk me to my knees?

Love that doesn't dissipate -
did it incite a riot in me?
Forcing through close passages
inside my lungs, beside my ribs
suffusing my bloodstream
and in my muscles and my marrow
striking at my stunned heart
to hover where I'm most exposed.

POEMS FOR THIS PROJECT WERE SELECTED FROM THE 7 COUNTRIES UPON WHICH A TRAVEL BAN WAS IMPOSED BY PRESIDENT TRUMP AT THE START OF HIS 2017 TERM:  Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen

Naji Almurisi, yemen

My Homeland

My homeland
I have left you
And my eyes are blindfold
I have left you nightly
I have left you forcibly
I don't know
Where? 
I have left you
O, my homeland
And my heart split to two halves
One half for you
And the other half
looking for my soul
And I am burning on the two halves…