Editor’s note: David Allen Sullivan teaches English and film at Cabrillo College. The following poems were taken from his latest book of poems about the Iraq war, entitled “Every Seed of the Pomegranate,” published this month by Tebot Bach. A publication celebration reading will be held at 6 p.m. on Sunday, July 15 at the Cabrillo College Horticulture Center, Room 5005.
Photo of the author by Amina Barivan.
Army Specialist
Donna Menesini
To the east, beyond
graffitied Abu Ghraib walls
is a stand of palms.
Every morning flocks
of blackbirds explode from them,
darkening the sky.
Behind, the sun flinches,
stutters back into focus,
continues to rise.
All day they travel,
nights they fluster to their roosts
while I go nowhere.
Their raucous greetings
echo off these shouting walls—
aggrieved villagers.
Professor Nadje Al-Ali
I have read of your
Persephone. She took six
pomegranate seeds
in her mouth, bit down
to release bright blood capsules
that stained lips and tongue.
The one who kept her
laughed, for she would be his bride
half of every year.
How to say? Sorrow
cuts us in two with sweetness.
Half the world is dead
to the other half.
Above us, mothers walk
under bare branches.
