Overland literary journal

OVERLAND 189
summer 2007
ISBN 978-0-9775171-6-9
published 21 November 2007

Culture and Its Terrors

Similes, nature analogies, never
so apt to term the pitfalls, assaults upon

the soul’s integrity. Imagine
sinking into depths deadlier than swamps

twisting through the spiral
of angry, lacerating waves. Yes, water

absolutely the right metaphor. Element
of emotion, sucking the body down a well

of killer sentiments. It’s not simply
nostalgia, but a new obsession. See

the pride, revived rituals of we
mere drifters who cannot wriggle our

insomnia-infested bodies out of the claws
of old world nightmares. Call us

tribal, ethnic, quaint, exotic
… dancers?! Somnambulists actually. Wish

we could sleep without the real threat
of drowning in the whirlpool of resurgent

displaced passion. You’ve seen us
flap incongruous flags, celebrate mismatched

dates. It’s not ‘community’. It’s the epitaph
of what we left to the mercy of dying elders in lands

with bleeding soil, inflamed air and blackened
lakes. Yes, the substance of the fierce vortex

of ‘minority ethnicity’ is muddy, tar
poisoned beyond refinement. But don’t lose sight

of the tornado of your ‘dominant culture’. Maybe
sandstorm would be more adequate. Your

nationalism, allegiance fetish
threaten to bury uniqueness with the sands

of stifling self-satisfaction. I’ve seen you
wave your garish flag, grunting anthems

that ‘define’ you. Your power to sequester
others’ lands, then call this ‘progress’,

the cruelty of a pernicious hurricane. And
your winds try to suck me up, have me

twist, submit to the cycles of your ‘national
psyche’. You want me as your ‘grateful

immigrant’, ‘integrate’, in short have
my bones bitten by the teeth of your storm

in the name of assimilation? Calling this
‘limbo’; dull euphemism. ‘Medieval torture’

melodramatic. So I’ve resorted to natural
disaster metaphors: Mother Nature’s blights

complement Father Culture’s terrors.

© Ali Alizadeh
Overland 189 – summer 2007, p. 71

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