Meat Market
—after Lebanon, a country with one of the worst economic crises since the 19th century
the price of bread has gone up again. Throngs of cars
slouch toward shuttering gas stations. The currency, a farce
with each swing of the gavel, numbers
soar. Fifty thousand pounds by day’s end.
what’s another ten thousand? Or a hundred thousand?
a hundred and forty thousand pounds to the dollar
my mother’s aged laugh thunders about the
price of rice. I worry myself out of an appetite
I want to believe in miracles, instead
I starve gratitude with guilt.
how much for meat today? There are
no lambs left to sacrifice in the afterlife.
the tomatoes wilt into speckled
wax. I bury them in the mountains.
my mother’s aged laugh thunders about the price
of olive oil. I swallow glass in small gulps.
look, the crops melt into a starved earth
peppered with griefs my people speak like spells.
behold, a nation where time itself is a construct.
where every day is simultaneously 1975, 2003, and 2020.
few things are as grotesque as survival but what if
we made this life so beautiful it has no choice but to bend.
by Lara Atallah
from Split This Rock