Shrapnel Maps by Philip Metres

This book has been on my reading list since its release in 2020. But I’m glad I didn’t get to it until this year. It is timely. In Shrapnel Maps, Philip Metres takes the reader to what is currently the state of Israel. I say that not as a political statement, but because the book itself explores how one piece of land can have many names, many meanings, and many histories. In a discussion of Shrapnel Maps, it feels wrong to call this bit of Earth by any name, because any name is incomplete. And it’s impossible to write about this bit of Earth without marking the violence. This violence is ever-present in Metres’ poems, but the eye of the poem is not looking at the bombs, the guns, the bulldozers. The eye is always on the human, the committers of the violence, and equally, the once forced to accept it. The poems live within human lives. This book is a work of translation of experience, which is fitting in this bit of Earth that has layer upon layer of languages and peoples. This book was deeply needed in 2020, but that need has grown into a screaming void today. Whether you’re a habitual reader of poetry or not, read this. Buy here.

From “A Concordance of Leaves”

& though some seaside cafe will split into glassy

shards of people these people

)

will have had nothing to do

with it, the bulldozers will doze their roads

)

so that every road ends in a wall

every car will off-road through olive groves

)

& though we won’t see the sea the wind

will haul it & the whole village will arrive

)

at the village, until the village will be

a living map of itself, actual size

Coda

like strapping a small bomb

to your third finger / that ring

)

about which we could not

speak upon our arrival

)

& departure from the country

of memory where we left you

)

sister / among the fragile

projectiles inside the book

)

whose pages the wind riffles

searching for a certain passage

From “When It Rains in Gaza”

Above the tub, Salem Saoody leans,

grinning and palming the frothing water

over niece and daughter, their hair slicked

with soap, their bodies gleaming in the brisk

delight of being bubble-wet and clean. Pull

back. Around the tub, the ceiling in piles—

the walls just a few columns and open.

The whole neighborhood a roofless ruin,

a movie set for apocalypse. After.

Welcome to the desert of the real.

Just the rub survives this Operation

Protective Edge. So focus in: laughter

and water, froth and a father’s smile.

The heart will break what the eye can’t swallow.