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Gathering the Tribes QUOTES

Gathering the Tribes QUOTES

1 " In the night I come to you and it seems a shame
to waste my deepest shudders on a wall of a man. "

― Carolyn Forché , Gathering the Tribes

2 " I take off my shirt, I show you.
I shaved the hair out under my arms.
I roll up my pants, I scraped off the hair
on my legs with a knife, getting white.

My hair is the color of chopped maples.
My eyes dark as beans cooked in the south.
(Coal fields in the moon on torn-up hills)

Skin polished as a Ming bowl
showing its blood cracks, its age, I have hundreds
of names for the snow, for this, all of them quiet.

In the night I come to you and it seems a shame
to waste my deepest shudders on a wall of a man.

You recognize strangers,
think you lived through destruction.
You can’t explain this night, my face, your memory.

You want to know what I know?
Your own hands are lying. "

― Carolyn Forché , Gathering the Tribes