Fourth Person Singular

My local library branch has a rotating display based on varying themes. Every now and then, one of the titles will grab my attention. This was the case recently when I left with the 2017 publication "Fourth Person Singular" by Nuar Alsadir.

An odd collection of poems and snippets of thoughts, I enjoyed the higgledy-piggledy nature of her writing, mixing raw emotions with playful musings. I'm not sure how one becomes a poet, but I'm guessing it's similar to a comedian and likely why I'm intrigued by both. Observation meets lyric and when executed well, there is an engaging and riveting truthfulness that leads to personal reflection and musings of one's own. It's easier and more convenient to display the work and words of others, but perhaps in the future, I'll do some digging of my own and discover I too have some lyrical commentary to share. For now, enjoy the following by Alsadir:


Why do scabs itch? Wasn't the initial pain enough?


(I was quick to intrude upon the dream to change my outfit)


I'm tiptoeing around my life.


Does my heart sit on fault lines?


Sadness folds the chair I would have sat on -


Dreamt I wrote my autobiography: the pages were
blank, the text in footnotes.


It's degrading to be reduced to concerns about
survival - war brings people to that position.


Why did they care so much, all the king's horses and
all the king's men? Was nothing else happening in the
kingdom? Was Humpty Dumpty somehow important
to the greater good? Or was it the impulse to put the
pieces back together again, revert to an idyllic image of
cohesion, avoid fragmentation at all cost?


Sketch 27
A man entered the subway car at Borough Hall,
was about to sit, but just as his knees began to bend
the train jerked into motion. He stood up, as though
regaining composure after a brief humiliation,
as though it were somehow shameful to be subject
to gravity's impersonal force, caught
in its grip, an object controlled by physics.

Remembering "Reading Rainbow",

SJW