Salt and Metal
The metallic taste of clotted blood, like the salt from a cold sweat, seems ubiquitous. Ineradicable. Liyou Libsekal was born in 1990 in Ethiopia and currently lives in Addis Ababa. She is an award-winning author and poet and received, for instance, the 2014 Brunel University African Poetry Prize. Her poetry explores themes such as identity, origins and rootlessness. In this issue, Liyou Libsekal writes of fear and suspicion that has branded her to both body and soul, and the taste and scents of which remain constant reminders.
At the edge, “freedom” twists—
a filthy word
we watched the television and begged for
things to keep
breath and “peace.”
And when the bodies trickled onto the street
the faces stark, reflective
shimmering like fields of teff, swaying together
in the wind, the sun
the given light
we latched the doors and kept vigil
at the screen
sweating cold, historic sweat
we watched the land stretch,
a mother shifting from sleep
the taste of gore
still stinging between her children’s lips
the stillness before eruption
still lapping at their ears
the flags billowed.
“Let the good light in!” We howled
wiping ourselves of dread and disbelief
of the markings of birth,
“she is ours, she is all of ours!”
We pull our bodies close to hers
skin, indelible, still weeping eons of
salt and metal
we keep watch, lest any forget.
