OCTOBERS: Poems

by Sahar Muradi

Overview

Longlist Finalist, 2023 Julie Suk Award

OCTOBERS traces the four great tumults of the author’s life, all of which originated in that jagged month of different years: The US invasion and occupation of her native Afghanistan, the death of her father, the sudden end of a love, and the birth of her daughter. The poems chart heartbreak along a helix, progressively and recursively, where “echoes are inevitable.” Ultimately, the collection is concerned with language—as witness and buoy in the white waters of loss, as a tool for violences small and state-crafted, as an asymptote both approaching ideas of “home” and estranged from it, and, beyond it all and still, as a source of wild wonder.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822967088
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	10/10/2023
Series:	Pitt Poetry Series
Pages:	120
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Sahar Muradi is author of the chapbooks [ G A T E S ], A Garden Beyond My Hand, and Ask Hafiz: A Migration Story Told through Poetic Divination. She is coeditor of One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature and EMERGENC(Y): Writing Afghan Lives beyond the Forever War: An Anthology of Writing from Afghanistan and Its Diaspora, and coauthor of A Ritual in X Movements. She is a recipient of the Stacy Doris Memorial Poetry Award and the Patrons’ Prize for Emerging Writers from Thornwillow Press, as well as a finalist for the National Poetry Series and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Sahar is cofounder of the Afghan American Artists & Writers Association and dearly believes in the bottom of the rice pot.

Read an Excerpt

washee/was she 

 

she was washee i told her you are 

like your motherland a wilderness 

needs a belt laid down two white  

hotel towels took her into the tub to 

wudu the boys out of her mouth pointed 

her nipples toward qibla wiped clean 

her intention to perform ruk’u as if 

carrying a glass of chai on her back 

fold at the knees palms to the ground 

tucked her soles under her astaghfirullah  

used country 

 

in my used country I felt his teeth 

circle as a mosquito the black mystery 

he placed my right hand over my wrong 

stain said he was bringing me home 

offered me a suite with a lock a key in 

the shape of a brother perhaps twenty- 

two years old my body pure as a glass 

table he spilled was she my boss on my 

back at night came easy as a fly  

to post-conflict faithfully   

used my country 

 

 

Grasping 

 

1 

Time, I am leaning into you 

pushing all my chips to your corners. 

Here in the grief of my hands, 

in the elegies of grasping, 

remind me how useful it was, 

the arrow. 

 

2 

Lessons of infancy: 

When he leaves the room, 

he does not exist. 

If I am hungry, 

I am permitted to wail. 

And above my head, the mobile. 

What finer constellations outside myself. 

 

3 

Echoes are inevitable. 

The long space behind my body, 

the tall stem of day hissing through the clock, 

avoiding the gaps. 

What does it mean to live in the gaps, 

in the places where it is groundless, 

to be so open  

to this one morning with its distinct wink? 

 

4 

Something about surrender. 

At dawn, a pledge of white flags. 

Turning over what I cannot hold: 

a library of nouns. 

What courage it takes to admit one’s size, 

to polish the day over and over 

grasping nothing. 

 

 

 

 

counterparts 

 

not all fear can be worked through 

the ocean’s example, constantly emptying 

 

the nasturtiums, she instructed me, were edible 

we ate the leaf, then the flower 

 

despite his clouds, he believes in life 

how we tire of one another’s othering 

 

I count the blessings  

to keep from hurting him 

 

the day circles  

as a mosquito 

 

when they lifted the cloth 

I saw one that was not you 

 

stood in my own corridor  

and remarked the lack of windows 

 

but I preferred to continually peel the orange and reject the fruit 

wouldn’t it taste of heartbreak 

 

I was invited to take flight into the red road 

to place my palm on the rock that formed the scripture 

 

grief being vital 

its violence being necessary 

 

I rub the shadows 

even in the garden 

 

the prison of living by conviction 

so many prisons 

 

I will move more slowly 

and it will still be a move 

 

eyes of little night 

and so, aching 

 

his voice high-pitched and proving himself 

back into my own body, eyes 

 

I believe in doom and all its sister griefs 

I believe in my thoughts reducing me to negligible  

 

I believe in the words that I make up to color myself 

we may not like you, but we love you in a very special way 

 

embarrassed of my lines that grow out of ether  

and die in ether 

 

feel the light shrink 

the breath small 

 

may you inch in the direction of trust 

hold the tail of your instinct 

 

may you fail and get up to see  

you did not die 

 

may you expose your poems to the u/v 

to the later atmospheres of your own doubt 

 

arrive with the bow taut, and he notices 

asks if it’s pointed at him 

 

i learned from my mother who left mines all across the house 

the point was to startle us into guilt 

 

imagine the future 

as if your narrow divination could ever know 

 

he and you will be two parallel lines 

never touching 

 

he will not leave 

and you will punish him for that 

 

what are the ways I try to be free 

I wondered against the clock 

 

a kind of life that is not certain  

but alive 

 

she spoke of fundamentalism  

as the understandable reaction to capitalist consumerism 

 

toys don’t satisfy the question  

why am I here 

 

I look for another answer 

my answer is * 

 

how to make perfect? 

seal every corner? edge god out? 

 

the gnarled root of time 

I touched it; it did not speak 

 

The problem was always 

trying to explain my face to everyone 

 

here is my will: bright as a firecracker 

here is his will: brighter 

 

in the eye, notice the lake 

in the lake, behold the sunken boats  

 

in the boats are worms gnawing on the past  

at the bottom of the past is the solid earth  

Editorial Reviews

I’m in awe of this book. And proud. Sharp, keen, elegant, muscular: OCTOBERS engages both the glories and madness of humanity with refined, rigorous, unapologetic wonder. Exile, homeland, occupation, war—which is to say: love—and time. In this resplendent debut, we are witnessing the arrival of a formidable new talent. These poems contain words ‘whose feet never touch the ground.’ Muradi yields meticulous prowess—fired and bolting hard—right from the gate.

Robin Coste Lewis

[A] tender and humane investigation of the linguistic artifacts of two decades of the War on Terror (born in Afghanistan, Muradi lives in New York) characterizes the collection, as does a refusal to synthesize irreconcilably divided identities, languages, worldviews.

Poetry Society of America

Muradi delivers proverbial insights and robust metaphors with mellifluous agility.

Publishers Weekly

Charged with bracingly original sight and sensibility, OCTOBERS is a book that ruptures experiences of exile, ravages of empire, lavish griefs, and unspeakable bindings to reveal in them astonishing new musics. Muradi’s approach is radially expansive—this is a collection woven out of thick strands of complex feeling and thought, geographic and psychic mappings, rhythmic vitality and kinetic structure. Not hyperbole: each line on every page is coiled, indelible in its impression. How long have I awaited this book? Muradi’s poems are those I feel protective over, so deeply do they shake and remake me. Hers is a voice you follow to its interminable reaches.

Jenny Xie

With profound tenderness, Sahar Muradi’s OCTOBERS announces the arrival of a wonderful new poet. She undoes language, weaves it anew: through ellipses, through snippets of Dari and Arabic, all the while singing of ‘white phosphorus over raqqa,’ of the orange wings of monarch butterflies, and the orange uniforms of Guantánamo. The fierce intelligence of her poems insists on the power of language to bring close again, or at least retrace, what is lost. This is a voice I have been waiting for.

Aria Aber

Without glossing political and cultural differences, this poet’s compelling grasp of the human psyche grounds and facilitates openings to understanding.

On the Seawall

OCTOBERS inhabits a deeply intimate space between countries seeking wholeness in belonging. There is belief here: belief in father, belief in God, belief in the wilderness of motherland, and belief in home. The experiments in dialogue, in artistic form, poem as visual paintings, and the visceral momentum of the zuihitsu create a vocabulary of resistance and praise. There is complexity to the texture of the movement of bodies and its connection to self and the bonds that anchor it.

Tina Chang

OCTOBERS is a richly gripping poem-journey through lives and languages, migrations/transitions, with profound openness to curious complexity. Sahar Muradi, born in Afghanistan, resident of New York City, employs subtly understated images, reeling us in to woven mysteries of time and story. It’s as if Muradi is speaking up from a difficult, often silent space for those who are forced to flee, recalibrate, make new homes, somewhere, anywhere, right here: ‘this one morning with its distinct wink’—brilliant. I feel I have never read anything quite like this voice before—it’s rare and so important.

Naomi Shihab Nye

"Muradi delivers proverbial insights and robust metaphors with mellifluous agility." 
—Publishers Weekly
 

“Charged with bracingly original sight and sensibility, Octobers is a book that ruptures experiences of exile, ravages of empire, lavish griefs, and unspeakable bindings to reveal in them astonishing new musics. Muradi’s approach is radially expansive—this is a collection weaved out of thick strands of complex feeling and thought, geographic and psychic mappings, rhythmic vitality and kinetic structure. Not hyperbole: each line on every page is coiled, indelible in its impression. And beyond the viscosity of Muradi’s language and the urgency of her seeing, we have the staggering means by which the poems name, commemorate, interrogate, memorialize, sing, and fall silent. How long have I awaited this book? Muradi’s poems are those I feel protective over, so deeply do they shake and remake me. Hers is a voice you follow to its interminable reaches.”
—Jenny Xie, author of Eye Level 

“Octobers is a richly gripping poem-journey through lives and languages, migrations/transitions, with profound openness to curious complexity. Sahar Muradi, born in Afghanistan, resident of New York City, employs subtly understated images, reeling us in to woven mysteries of time and story. Births, childhoods, cities, histories, quiet discoveries, studding the wide panoply of chaos and possibility—I loved the quietude of these brilliant scenes, their haunted reverberations. It’s as if Muradi is speaking up from a difficult, often silent space for those who are forced to flee, recalibrate, make new homes, somewhere, anywhere, right here: ‘this one morning with its distinct wink’—brilliant. I feel I have never read anything quite like this voice before—it’s rare and so important.”
—Naomi Shihab Nye, Donald Hall Prize judge and author of Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems

“Charged with a profound tenderness, Sahar Muradi’s Octobers announces the arrival of a wonderful new poet. These are variegated poems: about migration, about grief and giving birth, about Afghan cities and Floridian weather--but the shadow that arches over all of them, darkening the weather of these landscapes, is the violence of nation states, the repercussions of war. Muradi undoes language, weaves it anew: through ellipses, through snippets of Dari and Arabic, all the while singing of ‘white phosphorus over raqqa,’ of the orange wings of monarch butterflies, and the orange uniforms of Guantánamo. The fierce intelligence of her poems insists on the power of language to bring close again, or at least retrace, what is lost. This is a voice I have been waiting for.” —Aria Aber, author of Hard Damage 

“Octobers inhabits a deeply intimate space between countries seeking wholeness in belonging. There is belief here: belief in father, belief in God, belief in the wilderness of motherland, and belief in home. The experiments in dialogue, in artistic form, poem as visual paintings, and the visceral momentum of the zuihitsu create a vocabulary of resistance and praise. There is complexity to the texture of the movement of bodies and its connection to self and the bonds that anchor it, as Sahar Muradi asks in one poem, ‘So much writing is born of longing. So much living.’ Muradi creates an astonishing new collection of poems that invites the reader to journey through the ‘intimate and holy,’ as it lives most fully in a devotional language, turning it into a tender yet mighty revelation.” —Tina Chang, author of Hybrida 

“I’m in awe of this book. And proud. Sharp, keen, elegant, muscular: Octobers engages both the glories and madness of humanity with refined, rigorous, unapologetic wonder. Exile, homeland, occupation, war—which is to say: love—and time. I’ve been a strong admirer of Muradi’s poetry—literally—for decades, just waiting for this moment. In this resplendent debut, we are witnessing the arrival of a formidable new talent. These poems contain words ‘whose feet never touch the ground.’ Muradi yields meticulous prowess—fired and bolting hard—right from the gate.” —Robin Coste Lewis, author of To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness and Voyage of the Sable Venus 

“[A] tender and humane investigation of the linguistic artifacts of two decades of the War on Terror (born in Afghanistan, Muradi lives in New York) characterizes the collection, as does a refusal to synthesize irreconcilably divided identities, languages, worldviews.”
—Poetry Society of America

From the Publisher