The ghazal is a formal poem that has roots in seventh-century Arabia and was often sung by musicians. The poet Agha Shahid Ali introduced the form to America. “Ghazal” literally means “the cry of a gazelle” as it is being chased and about to die. Like many formal poems such as the sonnet, the ghazal, with its restrictions, can paradoxically illuminate and parse difficult emotions. In López’s poem, the emotion is grief — a longing for and memory of a murdered brother. This poem mostly follows the parameters of a ghazal with its repeated end word, “song,” and the inside rhyme of “forever,” “far,” “marred,” etc., as well as the poet’s name or reference to the poet (“Sister”) in the final line. One way this poem breaks the rules is that each couplet doesn’t stand alone as if it were its own poem. Instead, the end of the couplets often bleed into the next stanza, linking the narratives. Selected by Victoria Chang
Credit…Illustration by R. O. Blechman
Sister Song
By Casandra López
I am not much more than a promise of a song,
that Brother never asked me to sing, our forever song,
but the crack of streets is sometimes a prison.
It wasn’t always this way, me swallowing a far song.
Once your neighbor friend chewed a lightbulb and didn’t
cry. His child-mouth smiled, a glass cracked marred song,
close to lips. On the 4th of July you used to like to light
the streets on fire, we’d become bright — a North Star song.
These days I stay inside when there is too much noise,
shattered bottles or loud aerial dances; I become a scarred song
remembering Brother, a street number tattooed to your arm
you can’t rub off. It inks my own, a tarred song,
that never feels clean. Once you trucked a load of fireworks across
borders. Mother forbid it, not wanting you to become a guarded song,
an imprisoned light. Sometimes I tire, all the singing, want to witness
the sky boom, flare and burn, want to hear you call me Sister again.
Victoria Chang is a poet whose new book of poems is “The Trees Witness Everything” (Copper Canyon Press, 2022). Her fifth book of poems, “Obit” (2020), was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Time Must-Read. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches in Antioch University’s M.F.A. program. Casandra López is a writer and poet. She is the author of a collection of poetry, “Brother Bullet” (University of Arizona Press, 2019), and a founding editor of the literary journal As/Us: A Space for Women of the World. She will begin teaching at the University of California, San Diego in fall 2022.
