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    • A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOUTH FLORIDA POETRY
    • Adam Day
    • Album of Fences
    • Favorite Poems
    • Follow the Dancer
    • In Memoriam, John Arndt
    • Hargitai Humanism and
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  SoFloPoJo
Picture
February 2023 - Spotlight on Adam Day
Author's statement:


“36 Hours in the Strategic Crescent”
​
is an excerpt from a book-length poem sequence which utilizes the template
of the longstanding New York Times “36 Hours in _________” travel series,
over which is written a complication of that template’s context.

It is a poem that is deeply concerned with the lives and locations connected
to the recent years of U.S intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq. And it is also
very much a poem rooted in an American sensibility.

The poem is spoken in several registers. 


Picture

36 Hours in the Strategic Crescent                                                                                                     
 
Nearby Erbil is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (take that,
               Ghor!). There I questioned Benedetta al-Nadawi, a card carrying
member who wore a gorgeous lilac hijab, and said, “I love Erbil
               in the frost — you get a much truer Kurdistan.”
 
               She owns the Band-e Amir estate. Her mother, Iris Ahmad,
a collector of lost and exiled men, wrote Love in Erbil:
               An Erotic Diary, 1943-1944 — the de facto textbook of the area.
                                                  ~
                              or / know he’s here until I hear
                              my breathing double
                              and he's beside me smiling
                              like a fetah shabh.      
 
                                                 ~

“This time of year, the clay turns to mud,” Ms. Ahmad volunteered.
               “I put on my boots and go for long walks along
the quiet paths in the forest. It’s rather languid and ambient.
               And you often see a family of fallow deer.” In fact, wildlife
 
is a big part of the area’s charm. “The landscape is lush and full
               of boar, cape hare and snowcock. Whereas in the summer,
you don’t see many animals, and the fields are plowed
               and ochre” — this is John Voigtmann, an American expat, who turned
 
a crumbling stone barn into al-Hatra, an eight-room boutique
               hotel that sits atop the most-photographed of the area’s cedar-lined
roads. With its sleek four-poster beds and infinity-edge pool,
               it is one of the rare modern-design hotels in the area. Though,
 
the electricity is often out, so each room comes
               with a propane heater. Al-Hatra abuts the neighboring zoo’s
elephant enclosure, and no one should miss the tiny island
               that is home to a siege of green-backed herons whose impressive
 
wingspans are revealed when the obsequious waders take flight.
               Though, on our visit, one bird with a wing dragging like a banner
only humped down shore. “This is the time of year maybe people
               are a little more affable. Ghazni comes back to its own life then,”
 
Mr. Voigttman said, when nudged to speak further. “You see real
               al-Anbaris sitting in a cafe, taking arak, a drink that could eat
the live steel from gunbutts.”
                                                  ~

4. Drink Decisions | Midnight
 
Three excellent new night spots opened
               in 2013, so drinking options await
               the eager night owl. At the end of a dank
alley in an obsolete foundry,
               Mesbek Baaj unleashes a sea of C’s --
 
               Champagne, Chivas Regal, Cohibas,
Cartier, and cleavage. Here arak-
               sipping, in-the-know locals, smoking sweet
               fruit tobacco from narghile pipes, mix
with dolled-up young professionals, cigar-
 
               chewing industry captains and local
               celebrities. They fill plush red booths and chairs
to watch a dozen musical acts. Backed
               by an orchestra in carmine robes,
               the talents range from leopard-print divas
 
doing Beyoncé covers to the Chehade
               Brothers. The $55 or 65,477 dinar
               cover charge is applied toward drinks. Looking
to keep the night going, and for a scene suited
                to skin-tight leather pants? Then slip into Jaf, 
 
​
               a clandestine club with deafening music
and a fetishist concept (cocktails
               and clamps), a kind of authenticity
               compulsion, focused on an alternative set
of procedures that attract intrepid crowds.
 
               As you enter the premises—which are kept lightless
               with painted windows—bouncers hand you
a small flashlight, and glow-in-the-dark
               paint-lined paths lead to a variety of theme-rooms
               with the high turpentine of fetid sweat
 
in the air. Whatever one’s interests—learned
               helplessness, environmental manipulation, &c.--
               they can be found here: bad boys and girls kept
in total darkness and isolation,
               with a bucket for human waste,
 
               and lacking sufficient heat in icy months.
Or clients detained in a central area,
               and walked around diapered or nude,
               with the short stiff steps of circus ponies,
no matter how hard they attempt to execute
 
                a slinky strut. Or they might
               be subjected to rectal examination.
After all, the services are à la carte.
               You’re as likely to see these clients hosed down
               while shackled naked, and placed in cold cells,
 
as to see the hallucinatorily
               sleep-deprived hog-tied or chained to bars,
               hands above heads. There was rumor
of one sub who had been chained standing
               for 17 days straight. The club workers’
 
               somewhat strenuous sport is less sadistic
than bureaucratic in its radical
               negation of the clients’ dignity.
               They will even interrogate you; for an additional fee.
The most highly valued adventurers
 
               are hung for hours, swinging like shadows
               pacing a warehouse floor, toes barely touching
cold concrete; choked, thin-lipped,
               smiling mouths deprived of food, and made
               the subject of mock execution.
 
                                                  ~

​ 
Still imbued with that Dionysian spirit, we set out on a brisk
               Wednesday morning for the feudal town of Samarra for lunch
and Prosecco. As we drove our black Suburban to the miniature
               hilltop hamlet, a troop of policemen on horseback descended a hummock,
 
and the clouds opened suddenly, as if a swift had ripped a seam
               in the sky. It began to drizzle, then pour. Black sycamores steamed
above small stone houses. Along the road stood a jeep
               with a silver birch growing where the engine had been. Winter in Saladin
 
is damp and pleasantly cool, with temperatures dipping as low
                as 30 degrees, the sun seemingly listing out of axis, though it rarely
snows in the swale. And the landscape turns to a vibrant shade
               of jungle-emerald — the only place I know that’s more gaudy in winter.
 
                                                    ~
                                                  He asks
                              me the names of all
                              the tools and all
                              their functions,
 
                                                     ~
 

Adam Day is the author of Left-Handed Wolf (LSU Press, 2020), and of Model of a City in Civil War (Sarabande Books), and the recipient of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship for Badger, Apocrypha, and of a PEN Award.