850 million tonnes & The Tradition

Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch
850 million tonnes
months of garbage into the sea, 850 million tonnes
last week, it rained in the city of Beirut, locals woke up to a river of trash
slithering between their houses it’s going into your sea?
it’s washing back up onto your beaches?
how awful this garbage, the collection company contract ended, it’s all free governance, corruption, mismanagement it’s all garbage filled streets
the old man on the side of the road, yelling “they threw it into our sea”
to no one scooters speeding by on small cobble streets
building an incinerator from scratch a separation of garbage at the source
a second separation a treatment of garbage and recycling
but what type what standards
what generation of incinerators new filters? old beat up Mercedes speed by
large puffs of smoke leaving behind grey air
the kids on the side of the road begging for better lungs
hands grey brown with dust
he says it requires continuous filtration
but our government is not trustworthy
they hold so many solutions non actionable
without the incinerator waste management can still happen
when burning everything the rest where is it gonna go
matter doesn't just disappear trapped in the air
in the lungs of old women on the coats of feral cats
in the skin of bananas infused in the oil of kahwa
Lebanese citizens already ahead of the government
many neighbourhoods recycle on their own expense
if there are incentives and trust many people are ready
we are always conscious of the danger of the situation
isn’t that the lebanese way
to sort your problems without relying
on your government?
it’s a postmodern state, he says to the foreign reporter on the radio
we know how to live without the state
and yet fear coats his next words within all this
Beirut is still charming a very hospitable city
please don’t stop visiting tourists line the beaches
rushing away in disgust British accents less and less present
he explains: low-rise buildings demolished replaced with luxury residential towers
owned by Lebanese expatriates or foreigners
often occupied only seasonally
fleeing their migrant countries
for a small whiff of garbage
the expert on the radio do not forget him urges top of his lungs now
like many problems we’ve gone through
there will always be a solution weakly, he promises
and we citizens are ready to fight for the basics
the civil movement is very well united
and working hard
we are united
no matter religion
or political affiliation
The Tradition
outside, near the depanneur on ogilvy
and hutchison, or close by on querbes and st-roch,
we walk slowly, head bowed down, out of bed
before we make it to the bend
in the road
this feeling of, will they fall out
won’t they fall out
like apples at the end
of the season
rotted inside, filled with bees
a thud as they hit the ground
or maybe they aren’t falling, a wrap around the chest
what are they if they are not actually there
no apples, no other fruit, the fall a tender season
before the challenge of incoming winter
if not, then what of this feeling of remembering
the absence pretending it is not absence, but something
like the way we cheese at our mom
show brushed teeth, scream finished, head off to bed, a minute early
or maybe the way a tree is only a tree if it is filled with lilacs
sometime in early june, the sound of you typing from the kitchen
the only way to remember you’re still around, but if not
something deeper, a chant we recite that sounds like it belongs
to church, but it doesn’t, a hymn deep in the tongue
rarely spoken by your mother anymore, if only to transition
centuries upon centuries of tradition into now
leaked down the family trees, a sap, perhaps this time, a cedar
or the apple tree on the end of your street, when you finally get home
lay on the couch with your head propped up, and wonder
how did I ever make it back here alive?
Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch is a queer Arab poet living in Tio’tia:ke, unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory. Their work has appeared in The Best Canadian Poetry 2018 anthology, GUTS, Carte Blanche, the Shade Journal, The New Quarterly, Arc Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. They were longlisted for the CBC poetry prize in 2019. You can find them on Instagram and Twitter @theonlyelitareq. Their book, knot body, was published by Metatron Press September 2020, and their upcoming poetry collection, The Good Arabs, will be published by Metonymy Press in 2021.