{"id":143722,"date":"2020-03-25T19:23:26","date_gmt":"2020-03-25T23:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=143722"},"modified":"2020-03-25T19:23:26","modified_gmt":"2020-03-25T23:23:26","slug":"2020-whiting-awards-aria-aber-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/03\/25\/2020-whiting-awards-aria-aber-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Aria Aber, Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Aria Aber. Photo: Nadine Aber.<\/p><\/div>\n

Aria Aber was raised in Germany. Her debut book Hard Damage<\/em> (University of Nebraska, 2019) won the 2018 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Her poems are forthcoming or have appeared in The New Yorker<\/em>, Kenyon Review<\/em>, The Yale Review<\/em>, The New Republic<\/em>, and elsewhere. She was the 2018\u20132019 Ron Wallace Fellow at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\u201cAfghan Funeral in Paris\u201d<\/p>\n

The aunts here clink Malbec glasses
\nand parade their grief with musky, expensive scents
\nthat whisper in elevators and hallways.
\nEach natural passing articulates
\nthe unnatural: every aunt has a son
\nwho fell, or a daughter who hid in rubble
\nfor two years, until that knock of officers
\nholding a bin bag filled with a dress
\nand bones. But what do I know?
\nI get pedicures and eat madeleines
\nwhile reading Swann\u2019s Way<\/em>. When I tell
\none aunt I\u2019d like to go back,
\nshe screams It is not yours to want<\/em>.
\nHave some cream cheese with that<\/em>, says another.
\nOh, what wonder to be alive and see
\nmy father\u2019s footprints in his sister\u2019s garden.
\nHe\u2019s furiously scissoring the hyacinths,
\nsaying All the time<\/em> when the tele-researcher asks him
\nHow often do you think your life<\/em>
\nis a mistake?<\/em> During the procession, the aunts\u2019 wails
\nvibrate: wires full of crows in heavy wind.
\nI hate every plumed minute of it. God invented <\/em>
\neverything out of nothing, but the nothing<\/em>
\nshines through<\/em>, said Paul Val\u00e9ry. Paris never charmed me,
\nbut when some stranger asks
\nif it stinks in Afghanistan, I am so shocked
\nthat I hug him. And he lets me,
\nhis ankles briefly brushing against mine.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\u201cOperation Cyclone, Years Later\u201d<\/p>\n

For all I know, God could be,
\nafter all, favoring a mountain
\nboy brown with dust, his brow
\ncalloused from the memory of men
\nhe\u2019s stoned to death, pissed
\non the corpse of. He is a student.
\nHe has seen, so has been
\nruined; each eyeball astonished
\nwith what has shot through
\nits pupil: a body will morph, in fall,
\ninto its surrounding\u2014even dam. Even
\nstone. We are what we are taught,
\nyes, but also what we
\nhope for. I hope for more than a war
\nthat whittles us to chameleons
\nor refrigerated paper tags
\nhanging from ankles. It is so certain,
\nwhere we\u2019ll end, yet arbitrary
\nare the words determining the trajectory
\nof our journeys; a name, too, is a gene
\nand may flourish or impugn
\nthe chromosome. Students hope
\nto be cradled by mothers\u2014hope for lunch,
\nan hour to play ball. Students
\nrock back and forth, warmed by the water
\nof prophecy. A lie, if repeated
\nad nauseam, eventually becomes
\na prayer. And a cyclone is not a cyclops
\nalthough it too has an eye\u2014
\nit can see. But would it testify?
\nIf the myths are right, the student gathers,
\nthen science is right, and the god particle
\nisn\u2019t, in the end, meant to be
\nkind to us. Still, the student imagines God
\nas moving, colorful shapes. He hums
\nbefore pulling the firing pin,
\nsinging I am a student,
\nI am a student, I am a student <\/em>
\nof God<\/em>, and he is right, for that
\nhe is, and the rotten field we have scythed
\nof this country is his school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read two poems by Aria Aber, winner of a 2020 Whiting Award for poetry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1928,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62796],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whiting-awards-2020"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhiting Awards 2020: Aria Aber, Poetry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Read two poems by Aria Aber, winner of a 2020 Whiting Award for poetry.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/03\/25\/2020-whiting-awards-aria-aber-poetry\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" 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