El Habib Louai is an Amazigh poet and translator from
Taroudant, Morocco. He edited and translated an anthology of contemporary Moroccan
poetry for Big Bridge Magazine. He is also the representative of 100 Thousand Poets for Change event in Agadir, Morocco. Louai has been rewarded Aimee
Grunberger scholarship by Naropa University to participate in Jack Kerouac
School of Disembodied Poetics summer creative writing program. His collection Mrs.
Jones Will Now Know: Poems of a Desperate Rebel was published last summer
by Paper Press. His translation of Michael Rothenberg’s Indefinite
Detention: A Dog Story is coming out in January 2016.
Agadir, Morocco
What did we
do wrong?
Except that we dreamed the dreams of
free men
in winter with holes in our stomachs.
We never asked for too much
in a life
already full of holes.
What did we do wrong?
Except that we wanted to
retrieve
some deep silence in our throats.
Except that we said no to
privatization of
what
remains of national education.
It was hard to get your attention
politely.
How many years did we sit smoking
dreamily
in the
direction of the prime minister's villa
waiting for
unilateral decisions?
We had no intentions to burn it down!
Backyard dogs tear at our shirts.
Pregnant women ran over, flattened
out,
their
breasts were stuck all red with blood.
Militarized batons became
disaffiliated
members of their race.
My life flashed in front of my face.
Here is a snapshot of me as a
stripped baby.
Next I woke up in a dark emergency
room.
What is liberty to the poor, old
woman
selling
smokes and peanuts, plastic bags
effacing
her fingerprints in Medina souks?
What is liberty to the bent, turbaned
head of a
sexagenarian veteran
gazing at
the void between crevices?
He never asked for a piece of the
cake.
He rotted securing your motherland.
What did we
do wrong?
Except that we dreamed the dreams of
free men
in winter
with holes in our stomachs.
We never asked for too much
in a life
already full of holes.
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