“A Mouthful of Salt… / I Came Through Numb Waters” by Charif Shanahan
“A Mouthful of Salt… / I Came Through Numb Waters”
Charif Shanahanfor Morgan P.
I know my suffering is loud but my skin
is light as sky and I was told to let itopen doors, shake hands, slip the cover
over their eyes, so I could be. Freeis not a negro doused in white, blanched,
bleached, and sent down the path. Freealmost never means alive, so please try—
I’m asking for help. Whose fist is in my ribsat which gate. What color is the room.
How do I move the line when it is buriedin the earth. Why do you think my face
is the face you think you see. In the earth.In the water. Where do I keep my feet.
My hands. My tongue. My lungs. My eye.
MARGINALIA
1.
Day 12 of The Sealey Challenge. Today’s offering is Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing by Charif Shanahan.
2.
Read the poems over and over in this book. What an intricate journey of finding oneself amid family, love, race, and culture. There is movement here—across continents and identities—as the poet continues to search for what is and what could be and for a part of himself that seems to stray further the closer he gets.
3.
And oh, the tension in language—I can feel the yearning for connection and the harsh realities that fragment it. I had to sit with the contradictions for a while, knowing it is my task as a reader—to do the work of understanding that in this world, dignity and justice are battles fought daily and not a given.
4.
When the poet explores race, I feel the intimacy of it, even if the idea itself spans histories and peoples. When he unearths raw truths of his own identity, I feel my heart give—the way he confronts the world that attempts to both define and confine him—I don’t think I’ve encountered writing that carries this much ache.
5.
It begs the question: how can you love a world that often feels like it’s pushing you away and yet find the strength to claim your space within it?
6.
After all of that, the poet leaves room for what isn’t said, allowing the silence to speak just as powerfully as the words on the page. Each poem feels like a careful unraveling of the personal and the political, a reminder that our histories are not just stories of the past but living realities that shape who we are.
KEEP READING
SOURCE
This poem appeared in Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing by Charif Shanahan, published by Southern Illinois University Press, 2017. Shared here with profound gratitude.
DESCRIPTION
“In this affecting poetry debut, Charif Shanahan explores what it means to be fully human in our wounded and divided world. In poised yet unrelenting lyric poems, Shanahan—queer and mixed-race—confronts the challenges of a complex cultural inheritance, informed by colonialism and his mother’s immigration to the United States from Morocco, navigating racial constructs, sexuality, family, and the globe in search of “who we are to each other . . . who we are to ourselves.”
With poems that weave from Marrakesh to Zürich to London, through history to the present day, this book is, on its surface, an uncompromising exploration of identity in personal and collective terms. Yet the collection is, most deeply, about intimacy and love, the inevitability of human separation and the challenge of human connection. Urging us to reexamine our own place in the broader human tapestry, Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing announces the arrival of a powerful and necessary new voice.”
ENDNOTES
- Read more poems by Charif Shanahan • Find books by this poet • Or view my library
- Explore other works in pursuit of: identity • the body • wounds • Or browse the index
- This is part of The Sealey Challenge.
DEAR READER
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Thank you for being here all these years—and into the future—as I hold poets to the light.
Karen Seashore
So powerful. I had to read it aloud several times to feel it.
T.
Thank you as always for being here. Hope you are well.
T.