Our Men Do Not Belong to Us
Warsan Shire
Our Men Do Not Belong to Us is the
opening noise of a poet who has already
gained a signicant amount of praise for
her poetry. Warsan Shires poems
are direct, but they are works of such
delicate construction and layered
insight that one quickly realizes what
seems direct is necessarily wholly
indirect, questioning, uncertain, and
vulnerable. Her poems are about how
women deal with the violence of all
kinds of exploitation, but they are
never didactic or simplistic. Shire lls
her poems with the effects of her
complex sense of identity in
transcultural Africa.
Kwame Dawes
Titles in the
Seven New Generation African Poets
Box Set:
Mandible, by TJ Dema
The Cartographer of Water, by Clifton Gachagua
Carnaval, by Tsitsi Jaji
The Second Republic, by Nick Makoha
Ordinary Heaven, by Ladan Osman
Our Men Do Not Belong to Us, by Warsan Shire
Otherwise Everything Goes On, by Len Verwey
Seven New Generation African Poets:
An Introduction in Two Movements,
by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani
To order
the Seven New Generation African Poets box set
or for more information, please contact
Slapering Hol Press at:
www.writerscenter.org.
This inaugural box set of new generation African poets
is dedicated to the memory of Ghanaian poet, Ko
Awoonor (1935-2013), who was killed in the terrorist
attack at Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya.
Look for a canoe for me
That I go home in it.
Look for it.
The lagoon waters are in storm
And the hippos are roaming.
But I shall cross the river
And go beyond.
from I Heard a Bird Cry, by Ko Awoonor
This is the abridged, electronic version of Our Men Do Not
Belong to Us. To purchase the original, full-length version, please
contact Slapering Hol Press, The Hudson Valley Writers Center,
300 Riverside Drive, Sleepy Hollow, New York 10591
(www.writerscenter.org)
Our Men Do Not Belong to Us
Warsan Shire
S l a p e r i n g H ol P r e s s 2 0 1 4
in association with the African Poetry Book Fund, PRAIRIE SCHOONER,
and the Poetry Foundations Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute
P OETS IN THE WORLD series
Compilation copyright 2014
The Hudson Valley Writers Center, Inc.
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-940646-56-5
Copyright in each individual poem and in other material contained in this chapbook
remains with their respective rightsholders.
Cover and all other art reproductions used by permission
of the artist, Adejoke Tugbiyele.
The Poetry Foundation and the Pegasus logo are registered trademarks of
The Poetry Foundation.
I Heard a Bird Cry, by Ko Awoonor, reproduced from The Promise of Hope: New and
Selected Poems, 19642013, Ko Awoonor, by permission of the University of Nebraska
Press. 2014 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska.
Slapering Hol Press
The Hudson Valley Writers Center
300 Riverside Drive
Sleepy Hollow, New York 10591
African Poetry Book Fund
Prairie Schooner
University of Nebraska
123 Andrews Hall
Lincoln, Nebraska 68588
The Poetry Foundation
61 West Superior Street
Chicago, Illinois 60654
Contents
4 Preface
9 What We Own
10 Ugly
12 Tea with Our Grandmothers
14 Things We Lost in the Summer
16 First Kiss
17 Haram
18 When We Last Saw Your Father
19 Conversations about Home (at the Deportation Center)
21 Trying to Swim with God
22 Snow
23 Residue
24 Grandfathers Hands
26 Souvenir
28 Chemistry
Preface
By Bernardine Evaristo
I would like to introduce Warsan Shire as one of the brightest
new voices in poetry. Born in Somalia, she lives in London, England,
where she is fast making a name for herself on the poetry reading
circuits.
To set a context for Shires work, it is important to note that
few African poets (or indeed black poets) are published in Britain
and that most poetry published on the African continent, where
poetry presses struggle to survive, does not reach an international
audience. While the founding fathers of African poetry were, with
the exception of Ama Ata Aidoo, just thatall male it is incredible
to consider that Anglophone African women poets are still invisible
in the global village of the twenty-rst century. The signicance of
Shires poetry cannot, therefore, be underestimated.
Without wanting to limit or make assumptions about her
readership, it is apparent from the cultural and gender bias of her
writing that she will be keenly heard by African and Afrodiasporic
women in particular. Also, rather refreshingly, Shire does not seek
to emulate the kind of poetry that tends to be lauded and laurelled
in Britain, poetry that is typically apolitical, aracial, and favoring the
conventions of obliquity and restraint what I call the stiff upper lip
of British poetry.
Warsan Shires poetry does its own thing; it is entirely her own
voice uninching and sometimes shocking, yet also exquisitely
beautiful, stunningly imaginative, imagistic, memorable always
deeply felt and eminently rereadable. Here is a poet who explores
how the victims of civil war can end up as refugees in the sometimes
hostile host communities of Europe; people who have lost
everythingfamily, nation, home:
No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a
shark. Ive been carrying the old anthem in my mouth
for so long that theres no space for another song,
another tongue, or another language. I know a shame
that shrouds, totally engulfs. I tore up and ate my own
passport in an airport hotel. Im bloated with language I
cant afford to forget.
[Conversations about Home (at the Deportation Center)]
Shire explores societies where dysfunctional male-female
relations are the norm and where too many men are too
often absent:
Our men do not belong to us.
Even my own father left one afternoon, is not mine.
My brother is in prison, is not mine. My uncles, they
go back home and they are shot in the head, are not mine.
(What We Own)
Here is a poet who writes about women inhabiting an intimate
microuniverse of mothering, support, sisterhood, sensuality but
also betrayal:
When she was my age, she stole
the neighbors husband, burned his name into her skin.
For weeks she smelled of cheap perfume and dying esh.
(Haram)
It is a place where female genital mutilation is a whispered horror.
My mother uses her quiet voice
on the phone:
Are they all okay? Are they healing well?
She doesnt want my father to overhear.
(Things We Lost in the Summer)
Shires poetry is imbued with loss, longing, loneliness indeed,
a complex negotiation of emotions. She challenges us to consider
and reconsider the lives of women usually spoken about but not
heard. The past, the present, the lyrical, and the anecdotal hers is
a name to watch as she inscribes herself into the future.
Our Men Do Not Belong to Us
What We Own
Our men do not belong to us.
Even my own father left one afternoon, is not mine.
My brother is in prison, is not mine. My uncles, they
go back home and they are shot in the head, are not mine.
My cousins, stabbed in the street for being too or not enough,
are not mine. Then the men we try to love say
we carry too much loss, wear too much black,
are too heavy to be around, much too sad to love.
Then they leave, and we mourn them too.
Is that what were here for?
To sit at kitchen tables, counting
on our ngers the ones who died,
those who left, and the others who were taken by the police,
or by drugs
or by illness
or by other women?
It makes no sense.
Look at your skin, her mouth, these lips, those eyes,
my God, listen to that laugh.
The only darkness we should allow into our lives is the night,
for even then, we have the moon.
Ugly
Your daughter is ugly.
She knows loss intimately,
carries whole cities in her belly.
As a child, relatives wouldnt hold her.
She was splintered wood and sea water.
They said she reminded them of the war.
On her fteenth birthday you taught her
how to tie her hair like rope
and smoke it over burning frankincense.
You made her gargle rosewater
and, while she coughed, said
macaanto girls like you shouldnt smell
of lonely or empty.
You are her mother.
Why did you not warn her,
hold her like a rotting boat,
and tell her that men will not love her
if she is covered in continents,
if her teeth are small colonies,
if her stomach is an island
if her thighs are borders?
What man wants to lay down
and watch the world burn
in his bedroom?
Your daughters face is a small riot,
her hands are a civil war,
a refugee camp behind each ear,
a body littered with ugly things,
but God,
doesnt she wear
the world well.
Things We Lost in the Summer
I.
The summer my cousins return from Nairobi,
we sit in a circle by the oak tree in my aunts garden,
and they look older. Amels hardened nipples
push through the paisley of her blouse,
minarets calling men to worship.
When they left, I was twelve years old and swollen
with the heat of waiting. We hugged at the departure gate,
waifs with bird chests clinking like wood, boyish,
long-skirted gurines waiting to grow
into our hunger. My mother uses her quiet voice
on the phone:
Are they all okay? Are they healing well?
She doesnt want my father to overhear.
II.
Juwariyah, my age, leans in and whispers,
Ive started my period. Her hair is in my mouth when
I try to move in closerhow does it feel?
She turns to her sisters, and a laugh that is not hers
stretches from her body like a moan.
She is more beautiful than I can remember.
One of them pushes my open knees closed.
Sit like a girl. I nger the hole in my shorts,
shame warming my skin.
In the car, my mother stares at me through the
rearview mirror, the leather sticks to the back of my
thighs. I open my legs like a well-oiled door,
daring her to look at me and give me
what I had not losta name.
First Kiss
The rst boy to kiss your mother later raped women
when the war broke out. She remembers hearing this
from your uncle, then going to your bedroom and laying
down on the oor.You were at school.
Your mother was sixteen when he rst kissed her.
She held her breath for so long that she blacked out.
On waking she found her dress was wet and sticking
to her stomach, half-moons bitten into her thighs.
That same evening, she visited a friend, a girl
who fermented wine illegally in her bedroom.
When your mother confessed, Ive never been touched
like that before, the friend laughed, mouth bloody with grapes,
then plunged a hand between your mothers legs.
Last week, she saw him driving the number eighteen bus,
his cheek a swollen drumlin, a vine scar dragging itself
across his mouth.You were with her, holding a bag
of dates to your chest, heard her let out a deep moan
when she saw how much you looked like him.
Haram
My older sister soaps between her legs, her hair
a prayer of curls. When she was my age, she stole
the neighbors husband, burned his name into her skin.
For weeks she smelled of cheap perfume and dying esh.
Its 4:00 a.m., and she winks at me, bending over the sink,
her small breasts bruised from sucking.
She smiles, pops her gum before saying
boys are haram; dont ever forget that.
Some nights I hear her in her room screaming.
We play surah al baqarah to drown her out.
Anything that leaves her mouth sounds like sex.
Our mother has banned her from saying Gods name.
When We Last Saw Your Father
He was sitting in the hospital parking lot
in a borrowed car, counting the windows
of the building, guessing which one
was glowing with his mistake.
Conversations about Home (at the Deportation Center)
Well, I think home spat me out, the blackouts and curfews like
tongue against loose tooth. God, do you know how difcult
it is to talk about the day your own city dragged you by the
hair, past the old prison, past the school gates, past the burning
torsos erected on poles like ags? When I meet others like me, I
recognize the longing, the missing, the memory of ash on their
faces. No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.
Ive been carrying the old anthem in my mouth for so long that
theres no space for another song, another tongue, or another
language. I know a shame that shrouds, totally engulfs. I tore up
and ate my own passport in an airport hotel. Im bloated with
language I cant afford to forget.
They ask me, How did you get here? Cant you see it on my body?
The Libyan Desert red with immigrant bodies, the Gulf of
Aden bloated, the city of Rome with no jacket. I hope the
journey meant more than miles, because all my children are in
the water. I thought the sea was safer than the land. I want to
make love, but my hair smells of war and running and running. I
want to lie down, but these countries are like uncles who touch
you when youre young and asleep. Look at all these borders
foaming at the mouth with bodies broken and desperate. Im the
color of hot sun on my face; my mothers remains were never
buried. I spent days and nights in the stomach of the truck; I did
not come out the same. Sometimes, it feels like someone else is
wearing my body.
*
I know a few things to be true. I do not know where I am going,
where I have come from is disappearing, I am unwelcome and
my beauty is not beauty here. My body is burning with the
shame of not belonging; my body is longing. I am the sin of
memory and the absence of memory. I watch the news, and my
mouth becomes a sink full of blood. The lines, the forms, the
people at the desks, the calling cards, the immigration ofcer,
the looks on the street, the cold settling deep into my bones,
the English classes at night, the distance I am from home. But
Alhamdulilah, all of this is better than the scent of a woman
completely on re; or a truckload of men who look like my
father, pulling out my teeth and nails; or fourteen men between
my legs; or a gun; or a promise; or a lie; or his name; or his
manhood in my mouth.
I hear them say, go home; I hear them say, fucking immigrants,
fucking refugees. Are they really this arrogant? Do they not know
that stability is like a lover with a sweet mouth on your body
one second and the next you are a tremor lying on the oor
covered in rubble and old currency waiting for its return.
All I can say is, I was once like you, the apathy, the pity, the
ungrateful placement; and now my home is the mouth of a
shark, now my home is the barrel of a gun. Ill see you on the
other side.
Souvenir
You brought the war with you
unknowingly, perhaps, on your skin
in hurried suitcases
in photographs
plumes of it in your hair
under your nails
maybe it was
in your blood.
You came sometimes with whole families,
sometimes with nothing, not even your shadow
landed on new soil as a thick accented apparition
stiff denim and desperate smile,
ready to t in, work hard
forget the war
forget the blood.
The war sits in the corners of your living room
laughs with you at your tv shows
lls the gaps in all your conversations
sighs in the pauses of telephone calls
gives you excuses to leave situations,
meetings, people, countries, love;
the war lies between you and your partner in the bed
stands behind you at the bathroom sink
even the dentist jumped back from the wormhole
of your mouth.You suspect
it was probably the war he saw,
so much blood.
You know peace like someone who has survived
a long war,
take it one day at a time because everything
has the scent of a possible war;
you know how easily a war can start
one moment quiet, next blood.
War colors your voice, warms it even.
No inclination as to whether you were
the killer or the mourner.
No one asks. Perhaps you were both.
You havent kissed anyone for a while now.
To you, everything tastes like blood.
Chemistry
I wear my loneliness like a taffeta dress riding up my thigh,
and you cannot help but want me.
You think its cruel
how I break your heart, to write a poem.
I think its alchemy.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to the editors of the publications in which versions of
these poems rst appeared:
Poetry Review: What We Own as What We Have. Copyright
2012. Used by permission of the publisher.
Wasari: Ugly
SPOOK Magazine: At the Thought of You and Residue
Neon 3: Chemistry, Residue, and What We Own as What
We Have
Ugly also appeared in the anthology The Salt Book of Younger Poets.
About the author:
Warsan Shire is a Kenyan-born Somali poet and writer based
in London. Shire has read her work extensively in Britain and
internationally, including recent readings in South Africa, Italy,
Germany, Canada, the United States, and Kenya. Her debut
chapbook is Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth (ipped eye).
Her poems have been published in Wasari, Magma, and Poetry
Review, and in the anthology The Salt Book of Younger Poets (Salt).
In 2012, she represented Somalia at Poetry Parnassus. Her poetry
has been translated into Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.
*
About the artist:
Adejoke Tugbiyele was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Nigerian
parents. Her work has been on exhibit at Aljira, a Center for
Contemporary Art; Galerie Myrtis; the Museum of Arts and
Design; the Museum of Biblical Art; the Reginald F. Lewis Museum;
the Goethe-Institut in Washington, DC; the United Nations
Headquarters; the Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos in
Nigeria; and the FNB Joburg Art Fair (2013) in Johannesburg,
South Africa. Her short lm, AfroOdyssey IV: 100 Years Later, will
premiere in Spain at LOOP 2014 Barcelona and at the Goethe-
Institut (Washington, DC, and Lagos, Nigeria). AfroOdyssey III,
the previous series, will be part of the 2013 2015 international
exhibition Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video at
the Jewish Museum of New York. Tugbiyele is an Artist-in-
Residence at Gallery Aferro and the recipient of several awards
including the 20132014 Fulbright U.S. student fellowship, the
2014 Serenbe Artist-in-Residence program, the 2013 Amalie
Rothschild Award, and the 2012 William M. Phillips Award for
best gurative sculpture. Tugbiyele holds a Masters of Fine Arts
in Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her
work is in the permanent collection of the Newark Museum and
signicant private collections in the United States.
Published by Slapering Hol Press
in association with
the African Poetry Book Fund, Prairie Schooner,
and the Poetry Foundations Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute
Poets in the World series
*
THE HUDSON VALLEY WRITERS CENTER, a nonprot organization, presents
public readings featuring established and emerging writers, offers workshops in
many genres, and organizes educational programs for school children, people in
underserved communities, and those with special needs.
In 1990, the Centers small press imprint, SLAPERING HOL PRESS, was established
to advance the national and international conversation of poetry and poetics,
principally by publishing and supporting the works of emerging poets.
The AFRICAN POETRY BOOK FUND, based in Lincoln, Nebraska, promotes and
advances the development and publication of the poetic arts through its book
series, contests, workshops, seminars, and through its collaborations with publishers
and other entities that share an interest in the poetic arts of Africa. Together
with Prairie Schooner, the University of NebraskaLincolns international literary
quarterly, the African Poetry Book Fund sponsors a yearly chapbook series.
THE HARRIET MONROE POETRY INSTITUTE (HMPI) is an independent forum
created by the Poetry Foundation to provide a space in which fresh thinking about
poetry, in both its intellectual and practical needs, can ourish free of allegiances
other than to the best ideas. The Institute convenes leading poets, scholars,
publishers, educators, and other thinkers from inside and outside the poetry world
to address issues of importance to the art form of poetry and to identify and
champion solutions for the benet of the art.
Seven New Generation African Poets is part of a collaboration with the Poets in the
World series created by the Poetry Foundations Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute.
The Poets in the World series supports research and publication of poetry and
poetics from around the world and highlights the importance of creating a space
for poetry in local communities. For more information about the Poetry Foundation,
please visit www.poetryfoundation.org.
Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute
Poets in the World series: Publications, 20132014
Ilya Kaminsky, HMPI director,
Poets in the World series editor
Another English: Anglophone Poems from Around the World, edited by Catherine Barnett and
Tiphanie Yanique (Tupelo Press)
Elsewhere, edited by Eliot Weinberger (Open Letter Books)
Fifteen Iraqi Poets, edited by Dunya Mikhail (New Directions Publishing)
Landays: Poetry of Afghan Women, edited by Eliza Griswold (Poetry, June 2013)
New Cathay: Contemporary Chinese Poetry, edited by Ming Di (Tupelo Press)
Open the Door: How to Excite Young People about Poetry, edited by Dorothea Lasky, Dominic
Luxford, and Jesse Nathan (McSweeneys)
Pinholes in the Night: Essential Poems from Latin America, edited by Ral Zurita and Forrest
Gander (Copper Canyon Press)
Seven New Generation African Poets, edited by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani (Slapering
Hol Press)
Something Indecent: Poems Recommended by Eastern European Poets, edited by Valzhyna
Mort (Red Hen Press)
The Star by My Head: Poets from Sweden, edited and translated by Malena Mrling and
Jonas Ellerstrm (Milkweed Editions)
The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing Across Borders, edited by Jared Hawkley, Susan Rich,
and Brian Turner (McSweeneys)
Upcoming African Poetry Book Fund Series Titles
Ko Awoonor, The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems: 19642013 (University of
Nebraska Press, 2014)
Clifton Gachagua, Madman at Kili (University of Nebraska Press, 2014)
Upcoming Slapering Hol Press Titles
Richard Parisio, The Owl Invites Your Silence (2015)
Julie Danho, Six Portraits (2014)
Molly Peacock and Amy M. Clark, A Turn Around the Mansion Grounds: Poems in Conversation
& a Conversation (2014)
Colophon
This book was designed and set in Eric Gills Perpetua and
Gill Sans types by Ed Rayher at Swamp Press in Northeld,
Massachusetts. The text and cover stocks of this chapbook
are Cougar Opaque. Digital printing by Printech of Stamford,
Connecticut. Swamp Press hand-bound, letterpress books
can be found in rare book rooms at major institutions in the
United States and Canada. Ed is a poet, letterpress printer, and
publisher of limited edition books of poetry. He has a MFA and
a PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In 2015,
his next book of poems, The Paleontologists Red Pumps, will be
released from Hedgerow Press.
Warsan Shire is a Kenyan-
born Somali poet and writer
based in London. Shire has
read her work extensively in
Britain and internationally,
including recent readings in
South Africa, Italy, Germany,
Canada, America, and Kenya.
Her debut chapbook is
Teaching My Mother How to
Give Birth (ipped eye). Her
poems have been published
in Wasari, Magma, and Poetry
Review and in the anthology
The Salt Book of Younger
Poets (Salt). In 2012, she
represented Somalia at Poetry
Parnassus. Her poetry has
been translated into Italian,
Spanish, and Portuguese.
Warsan Shires poetry
does its own thing; it is
entirely her own voice
uninching and sometimes
shocking yet also exquisitely
beautiful, stunningly imaginative,
imagistic, memorablealways deeply felt and
eminently rereadable. Shires poetry is imbued with
loss, longing, loneliness indeed, a complex negotiation
of emotions. She challenges us to consider and reconsider
the lives of women usually spoken about but not heard. The
past, the present, the lyrical, and the anecdotalhers is a
name to watch as she inscribes herself into the future.
Bernardine Evaristo
from the Preface
Seven New Generation African Poets, edited by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani,
a publication of Slapering Hol Press in association with the African Poetry Book Fund,
Prairie Schooner, is published as part of the Poets in the World series created by
the Poetry Foundations Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute.
Ilya Kaminsky is the Poets in the World series editor.
