Grand Bassam Saudade, by Cara Waterfall

Grand Bassam Saudade             

for the victims of the Grand Bassam terrorist attack & the people of Grand Bassam

after Joana Choumali’s exhibit, Ça va aller, a series of iPhone photographs printed on cotton canvas, and hand-embroidered. 
 
this silence / is like
a shroud 
 
I do not / know how 
to unstitch it / nor do I 
wish to
 
it keeps / the unsayable
intact / needled 
together
 
// 
  
each word / pearls
on my tongue
like water
over stone
 
no one / can yank
the skein / of sorrow
from my mouth
  
// 
 
how do I       helm         this ship       home      
              when    the last     hymn
             I hear                 is the sea’s               
                    metal slurry?
 
// 
 
was the ocean / light or dark?
 
did a bullet stray / between waves
to unmake / another life?
 
did the sun die / in the water / that day?
 
// 
 
only memory 
has a voice    
which percolates 
through walls
of brine & longing
 
// 
 
what’s left / is the numb sky --
a stretch / of leaden sediment --
this beach still stained 
with waves unspooling 
into nothingness 
riddled with filaments 
of algae / like loose threads
 
//
 
all of night is grief’s province
ever-generous, giving of itself 
endlessly, no peace, 
but an endless debris 
of memories
 
night unsheathes my eyes
monsters forth its orphan chant
whets the edge between 
the living & the dead
 
// 
 
I           am       tethered           to         this      town   
that     mends     itself               again    &         again
with     tendrils   of                     seaweed         &        
knotted            rock                    this                  is        
my                    foothold            though             I          
scramble          to         stay  
                                                                                    afloat

// 
 
that day still lives / in me,
but I will let / the loom
of colour / thread / through
 
// 
 
the sun proceeds/ loosens
itself from the ruins /swims
toward the darkness
 
the waves / over
each unstitched loop 
like a mouth / widening 
into speech

Cara Waterfall
 
Ottawa-born and Costa Rica-based, Cara Waterfall’s poetry has been featured in Best Canadian Poetry, CV2, The Fiddlehead, SWWIM, The Night Heron Barks and more. She has won Room’s 2018 Short Forms contest, Room's 2020 Poetry Contest and PULPLit’s 2020 Editors’ Prize. In 2019, she was a finalist for Radar Poetry’s The Coniston Prize and shortlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize. Most recently, her manuscript was a finalist for the Animal Heart Press Poetry Chapbook contest. She has a diploma in Poetry & Lyric Discourse from The Writer’s Studio at SFU. www.carawaterfall.com
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