Amsterdam

 

by Safia Elhillo

after Jenny Xie Concentric ripple of the canals, little apartment  at the center point. All June I’ve been in Amsterdam,  vowels softening to liquid in my mouth. Long walks  over the cobblestones in the warmest part  of the afternoon, narrow houses along the water arranged  like crooked teeth. My steps lead me over a ballet  of bridges, precarious choreography of bicycles  and other bodies, the rare car vulgar and roaring  along the too-small street. I count the faces around  that could be my faces, features and shades  from a much older world than this. City I may never  see again, and still my old need to belong. To daughter the possibly Sudanese man at the Chipsy King,  his kind assurance that the dish contains no pork.  My nails soften and split in the cool dry air. An ashen  gray patch on my calf and I am ashamed for hours after,  wetting a finger with saliva to correct it. from Poem-A-Day, May 8, 2023: “I wrote this poem during a month-long residency in Amsterdam during which I attempted a 30/30 (thirty poems in thirty days) with my friend Hala Alyan. It’s written after Jenny Xie’s poem ‘Corfu,’ which is one of my all-time favorite travel poems. So much of my writing practice during that month involved going on long walks and describing to myself what I was noticing, what I was feeling, retraining my poet’s eye to the present day after a long obsession with history, with all my life’s great ruptures. In this poem, the worst thing that happens is that I was, briefly, ashy. And that was as deserving of poetry as anything else that’s happened.” —Safia Elhillo