By Lena K Tuffaha
I.
before you can see
we’ll need to adjust the lens
we find that natural light can be
unforgiving,
all those lines and jagged edges
glaring,
beads of sweat shimmering on the brow
scarlet of a fresh wound
unfurling across a body
might overwhelm
we’ll need to calibrate
before you react
before you assign any labels to what you see
(like injustice)
before you identify any emotions stirring in you
(like anger or shame)
we’ll need to fine-tune
It’s so complicated, this cycle
what appears so obvious
cannot be named
to maximize clarity
find a signature for the moment
we’ll need to select an image
layer the right sounds on top of it
we assemble a collage of now
so you can understand what’s at stake
so you can understand what you think you are seeing
the information that is
being sent from your eyeballs to your brain
is just raw data
and must be processed for you
This is called Context.
see for example the brown-skinned boy
slender limbs running across the street
a rock in his hand
focus on the rock
if you feel a bit unsettled by the chaos unfolding on his street
the smoke billowing from fires all around him
the tank pouring out armed soldiers
at the vanishing point where he aims
steady yourself with the thought
of the damage that the rock could conceivably do
and here it would be illuminating to note
that we have soldiers too
our boys sent across the globe
and don’t we love our boys?
and don’t we want them to come home safe?
see? A tank isn’t necessarily a bad thing a semi-automatic
weapon aimed at a child maybe isn’t
what it appears to be
now hold these feelings in front of your eyes
as you look at that brown boy with the rock in his hand
This is called Nuance.
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now it gets trickier
you’ll need to remain vigilant
now that rock-throwing boy
wounds still fresh on his face
eyes half open to the sky
re-appears in the foreground swaddled in a flag piled onto a stretcher
and beneath him a teeming sea of people
swells in what was the street they are lifting what’s left of him overhead
let us now turn up the volume for you
let’s pan out resist the urge to look too long at
any one face
here a wide camera angle will do best
what are all these people saying?
focus on the totality of the sounds
why aren’t they softer? shouldn’t sorrow
be soft modest relatable?
focus on the Allahu akbar
who else says that? what have you learned to feel about those words?
This is called Critical Thinking.
IV.
if you find yourself distracted
caught by the anguish on the mother’s
face in the crowd
focus instead on her veil
notice how many women in the crowd are veiled
how do you feel about that?
let the question fall slowly
between you and the mother
whose son’s limbs have been
collected for burial
if you find your stomach
tightening at the sight of her pain
if you find yourself measuring
the miniscule space her son’s
corpse takes up on the stretcher
if your eyes find others in the crowd
focus
focus again on the sound that floats up
the words you don’t speak
you do not know these people
why are they so angry?
tune into how their grief is loud
and disarrayed and confusing
and threatens to make you feel bad
stay with these feelings
now hold these feelings in front of your eyes
to filter the images you are seeing.
This is called Balance.
For more poems by Lena K Tuffaha read the full winter 2015 issue