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Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch

ISSUE 4.1

JOSS BARTON
SON KIT
ALLISON PARRISH
JEANNE THORNTON

ISSUE 4.2

JO GOSH
ELI TAREQ EL BECHELANY-LYNCH
SAGE RAVENWOOD
HANNAH RUBIN

  • 850 million tonnes

     months of garbage into the sea, 850 million tonnes 
              last week, it rained in the city of Beirut, locals woke up to a river of trash
        slithering between their houses              it’s going into your sea?        
                                it’s washing back up                onto your  beaches?
                     how awful this garbage, the collection company contract ended, it’s all free
    governance, corruption, mismanagement      it’s all garbage filled streets
                             the old man on the side of the road, yelling “they threw it into our sea”
                                     to no one                 scooters speeding by on small cobble streets
                     building an incinerator from scratch     a separation of garbage at the source
                   a second separation                      a treatment of garbage and recycling       
                              but what type       what standards
                 what generation of incinerators        new filters?       old beat up Mercedes speed by
                        large puffs of smoke leaving behind             grey air   
                              the kids on the side of the road begging          for better lungs      
                                            hands grey brown with dust
                he says it requires continuous filtration 
                                                        but our government is not trustworthy

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    they hold so many solutions     non actionable   
                               without the incinerator      waste management can still happen     
         when  burning everything                   the rest       where is it gonna go 
                         matter doesn’t just disappear      trapped in the air 
                                       in the lungs of old women       on the coats of feral cats 
                 in the skin of bananas           infused in the oil of kahwa 
                              Lebanese citizens already ahead of the government 
                                           many neighbourhoods recycle on their own expense
                        if there are incentives and trust         many people are ready
          we are always conscious of the danger of the situation
                 isn’t that the lebanese way
       to sort your problems without relying
                  on your government? 
                 it’s a postmodern state, he says to the foreign reporter on the radio 
                                            we know how to live without the state
           and yet fear coats his next words                             within all this
                Beirut is still  charming            a very hospitable city
                             please don’t stop visiting                    tourists line the beaches 
       rushing away in disgust                   British accents less and less present 
    he explains:    low-rise buildings demolished       replaced with luxury residential towers 
                             owned by Lebanese expatriates      or foreigners
                                                                     often occupied only seasonally
                                                         fleeing their migrant countries
                                                                      for a small whiff of garbage
    the expert on the radio    do not forget him                          urges                    top of his lungs now
           like many problems we’ve gone through
                                          there will always be a solution               weakly, he promises
                               and we citizens are ready to fight for the basics
                                                           the civil movement is very well united
                                                                         and working hard 
                                                                                      we are united
                                                                                                    no matter religion 
                                                                                                                  or political affiliation

    The Tradition

    outside, near the depanneur on ogilvy

    and hutchison, or close by on querbes and st-roch,
    we walk slowly, head bowed down, out of bed
    before we make it to the bend

    in the road

    this feeling of, will they fall out
    won’t they fall out 
    like apples at the end

    of the season

    rotted inside, filled with bees
    a thud as they hit the ground

    or maybe they aren’t falling, a wrap around the chest
    what are they if they are not actually there

    no apples, no other fruit, the fall a tender season
    before the challenge of incoming winter

    if not, then what of this feeling of remembering
    the absence pretending it is not absence, but something

    like the way we cheese at our mom
    show brushed teeth, scream finished, head off to bed, a minute early

    or maybe the way a tree is only a tree if it is filled with lilacs
    sometime in early june, the sound of you typing from the kitchen

    the only way to remember you’re still around, but if not
    something deeper, a chant we recite that sounds like it belongs

    to church, but it doesn’t, a hymn deep in the tongue
    rarely spoken by your mother anymore, if only to transition

    centuries upon centuries of tradition into now

    leaked down the family trees, a sap, perhaps this time, a cedar
    or the apple tree on the end of your street, when you finally get home

    lay on the couch with your head propped up, and wonder
    how did I ever make it back here alive?

Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch is a queer Arab poet living in Tio’tia:ke, unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory. Their work has appeared in The Best Canadian Poetry 2018 anthology, GUTS, Carte Blanche, the Shade Journal, The New Quarterly, Arc Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. They were longlisted for the CBC poetry prize in 2019. You can find them on Instagram and Twitter @theonlyelitareq. Their book, knot body, was published by Metatron Press September 2020, and their upcoming poetry collection, The Good Arabs, will be published by Metonymy Press in 2021.