Matthew Shenoda
Matthew Shenoda is a Coptic poet, educator and activist. He is on the faculty of the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University
where he teaches courses on comparative Ethnic literature, post-colonial studies, and Ethnic representation in U.S. media. Shenoda is also a community organizer working
with racial justice organizations throughout the Bay Area. Shenoda’s poems have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, most recently Poets Against the War
and the forthcoming Anthology of Arab American and Diaspora Literature. His first book of poems, entitled Somewhere Else is forthcoming from Coffee House Press. Shenoda
is currently at work on a new collection of poems that explores the position of ‘Third World’ diasporas in the ‘First World’ and the Third Position or ‘homelessness’ of
life as a minority in one’s homeland as well as one’s host country.
April Featured Poem -
Dispatches from the New World Order by Matthew Shenoda
Standing on solid earth
It is clear that we have lost something
In this space of forever crossings and collapsible borders
This space of translucent snaking and palm shadow adaptations
We used to have jobs he says,
something to help sustain us,
something to reaffirm our humanity
through the ancient wisdom of work
now we have nothing but dissipating time
a horizon that wreaks of death
we learn the steps for a coming bone dance
we are destined to be skeletons encircling ravines
How do you articulate
indigenous sense that rises from streets like mist?
How do you convey
the reality that land can speak culture’s song?
We eclipse the moon with styrofoam
and ravage ourselves with jingle madness
articulating a corporate narrative
and suffocating the breathe of story–speakers
we crawl through epithet forests
craving the singular answer
forgetting that our fallen brothers are the only soothsayers on this land
and their voices are anything but lonesome
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