The Kidnapped Child as a Human Jigsaw Puzzle
by Nicholas Samaras
Each fragment of me / is a country of my living.
Each fragment / of me is a / village I passed through— /
transparent, van / ished, lost. /
Everywhere I’m from, / over a longest / horizon.
People are from / somewhere. / I’m from somewhere / else.
Lathed / by the machinery of transport— /
airplane, / last generation’s boats / docking, em / barking.
My arms / are west and eastern / stretched.
My shoes are the / color of dust. / Each fragment
of me, a human / jigsaw cut / and cut into / pieces
molded to fit. / I am the human jigsaw
whose seams look / like Frankenstein’s psychic /scars.
Piece me together, and / I don’t know /
what picture may form. / I am
all scenery. / I am rough cardboard
squiggled, / shaped, / veneered by panorama,
paper-thin pictured. / Piece me / together
until I can be / human for this while,
broken apart to be / moved again,
disassembled to be / packed or / thrown away.
I am collage, frag / ment of this century, / flake of this life.
I am tongue and groove / that can’t / talk, can’t / talk.
Jigsaw, I am / the mystery of dis / placement, / the picture
that implodes, / crumbles, / my pieces, ill-fitting,
dog-eared. The scene, / static in its drab accrual.
I am pieces and / pieces missing.
Frameless, I am the / whole incomplete.
I am the picture / imperfect.
Proximity is / ugly.
Proximity is witnessing / my flaws, the / scars.
Back up to / see me.
Back / up to see me.
In the Wake of Exile
by Nicholas Samaras
You have been in exile for two weeks.
Boarding the boat that takes you,
you are somewhere far off,
forgetting something,
stitching through a necklace of islands.
It is the journey you make in winter.
The moaning of engines, the heavy
rumble below deck on a black-onyx sea.
You do not eat, and grow invisible.
Stripped of everything,
you sleep like this:
in a berth the size of your body,
your face stubbed into the lumpy pillow,
your left palm cradling
your bruised testicles.
The string of lights fades in the hazy black.
The long beard you said goodbye to.
The long beard you know you are becoming.
The book you translate in your sleep.
On gaunt legs that feel unlike yours,
you leave the cabin and haunt the deck.
Stern-side, the gibbous moon
puddles in the froth of the wake.
Peer into the darkness.
Write this star down.
Nicholas Samaras is from Patmos, Greece (the “Island of the Apocalypse”) and, at the time of the political Greek Junta (“Coup of the Generals”) was brought in exile to be raised in America. His first book, Hands of the Saddlemaker, which includes the poems published here, won The Yale Series of Younger Poets Award.
by Nicholas Samaras
Each fragment of me / is a country of my living.
Each fragment / of me is a / village I passed through— /
transparent, van / ished, lost. /
Everywhere I’m from, / over a longest / horizon.
People are from / somewhere. / I’m from somewhere / else.
Lathed / by the machinery of transport— /
airplane, / last generation’s boats / docking, em / barking.
My arms / are west and eastern / stretched.
My shoes are the / color of dust. / Each fragment
of me, a human / jigsaw cut / and cut into / pieces
molded to fit. / I am the human jigsaw
whose seams look / like Frankenstein’s psychic /scars.
Piece me together, and / I don’t know /
what picture may form. / I am
all scenery. / I am rough cardboard
squiggled, / shaped, / veneered by panorama,
paper-thin pictured. / Piece me / together
until I can be / human for this while,
broken apart to be / moved again,
disassembled to be / packed or / thrown away.
I am collage, frag / ment of this century, / flake of this life.
I am tongue and groove / that can’t / talk, can’t / talk.
Jigsaw, I am / the mystery of dis / placement, / the picture
that implodes, / crumbles, / my pieces, ill-fitting,
dog-eared. The scene, / static in its drab accrual.
I am pieces and / pieces missing.
Frameless, I am the / whole incomplete.
I am the picture / imperfect.
Proximity is / ugly.
Proximity is witnessing / my flaws, the / scars.
Back up to / see me.
Back / up to see me.
In the Wake of Exile
by Nicholas Samaras
You have been in exile for two weeks.
Boarding the boat that takes you,
you are somewhere far off,
forgetting something,
stitching through a necklace of islands.
It is the journey you make in winter.
The moaning of engines, the heavy
rumble below deck on a black-onyx sea.
You do not eat, and grow invisible.
Stripped of everything,
you sleep like this:
in a berth the size of your body,
your face stubbed into the lumpy pillow,
your left palm cradling
your bruised testicles.
The string of lights fades in the hazy black.
The long beard you said goodbye to.
The long beard you know you are becoming.
The book you translate in your sleep.
On gaunt legs that feel unlike yours,
you leave the cabin and haunt the deck.
Stern-side, the gibbous moon
puddles in the froth of the wake.
Peer into the darkness.
Write this star down.
Nicholas Samaras is from Patmos, Greece (the “Island of the Apocalypse”) and, at the time of the political Greek Junta (“Coup of the Generals”) was brought in exile to be raised in America. His first book, Hands of the Saddlemaker, which includes the poems published here, won The Yale Series of Younger Poets Award.