Fugitive/Refuge

In “A Chronology of Roads,” from Fugitive/Refuge, Philip Metres writes:

                                                   Once existence
was hand to mouth. Then it was stone oven. Then

nostalgia for hunger, weight watching. Then watching
through rearview mirror a whole forest dress up

in smoke and flame

As Metres points out, this book draws its inspiration from the “images and stories of people caught in the fire zones of global violence.” Two such people are the writer’s great-grandfather, Iskandar, who was exiled from his native Lebanon and migrated to Salina Cruz, Mexico, and his grandfather, Felipe/Philip, who grew up in Mexico and later migrated to the United States.

Metres uses the qasidah, an Arabic poetic form in three parts, to explore different aspects of his family history, while also considering the plight of refugees around the world:

                        Their lives
shrunk to a single cell
they palm to their chest

in bus depots and windowless tents
at night, seeking a signal,
a recognizable voice, someone

home,

These poems reflect on what it means to be a refugee—to leave and not return, to experience nostalgia and longing, and to pass traumas on, as an inheritance, for generations. A series of poems, titled “This Sea, Wrought and Tempestuous,” weaves its way throughout this collection:

lost in the crossing            

bodies                      

wearing                               

journey        

swayed

As Metres explains in his notes, the series began as an “urgent email sent in 2014 calling on activists to put pressure on governments to rescue migrants at risk of drowning in the Mediterranean,” and is dedicated to “all those lost in the crossing.” The poems make ample use of white space, placing weight on each word and phrase and giving the reader room to take in the many losses.

Fugitive/Refuge draws on a rich array of source materials, such as immigration documents and family photographs. Among the poetic forms included are Arabic simultaneities, poems that “are meant to be read in two voices, one right to left, and the other left to right, overlapping or meeting at the center.” Though it bears witness to so much sorrow, this collection also offers glimmers of hope:

In the light, light more light, in the black, light,
and when it’s time to snuff this wick—light that light.