Poets and Poems: Chad Abushanab and “The Last Visit”

How does a child grow up when the father of the family is an alcoholic? How does a child respond when an alcoholic father abuses the mother? In such a situation, where does a boy look for a role model, or is the alcoholic father the role model?

Poet Chad Abushanab doesn’t ask these questions directly in his debut poetry collection, The Last Visit. But he might have, since he answers them in the poems he’s written. Many of the poem are written informal, rhyming verse, oddly heightening the sense and meaning of the poems. A formal, rhyming, metered poem about your father’s alcoholism? A poem about your mother’s split lip, and how she’d take you and your brother to buy a cheap toy after a violent episode? Or beating up another boy because you’re trying to prove something to your father?

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Broken pieces

After Psalm 122

Take one broken piece,

join with another broken piece,

collect all the broken pieces

and place the broken pieces

together and in proximity,

all these broken pieces

assembled to create 

a body

a gathering

a church.

Photograph by Nick Herasimenka via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The fusion comes

After Ephesians 1:7-12

The fusion comes,

the pieces, the broken threads

gathering together, moving

up through the air, coming

together as if the hand

was weaving a tapestry

made of all the broken parts,

the unraveled threads, combined

into a unity yet unseen,

a combination of things above

and things below, a brilliant

display of oneness, of life

as it is meant to be

designed to be

created to be.

Photograph by Meddy Huduti via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Unwritten” by Charles Martin

Katie Quinn is a star of stage and screen at the top of her profession. She demands, and gets, $25 million per movie. She has a stable of automobiles and houses on two continents.  She has a staff to command satisfaction of every whim and desire. She is in Miami, saying confession to the aging Father Steady Capris.

Katie Quinn is preparing to kill herself.

Following Katie at confession is a man whom we only know as Sunday. He has checked out from the world, and lives in and near the Everglades. His one engagement with the world is to disguise himself as a janitor, sneak into the children’s wing of a Jacksonville Hospital, and distribute toys and books to the children there.

We will come to know that Sunday has already tried to kill himself.

The only link between the two is the priest, who’s in the business of saving souls and healing brokenness. And he has his hands full with Katie and Sunday. And he will use both of them in what be a last attempt to heal.

Charles Martin

Unwritten by Charles Martin is the story of Katie and Sunday. Martin is the author of numerous books that plumb the depths of human emotion and experience. Some could be called romances, like The Mountain Between Us (soon to be a movie with Idris Alba and Kate Winslett).  If Unwritten is a romance, it’s the strangest romance you may ever read.

Sunday will have save Katie from suicide. And he will help her escape her life by successfully faking her death. Katie will gradually come to know who Sunday is, and she will learn that his pain is as intense as her own. Each will teach the other how to heal, and the healing means “unwriting” the lives written for them.

Unwritten is an engaging novel of brokenness and redemption.

Related:

Charles Martin’s Where the River Ends

Charles Martin’s The Mountain Between Us

Charles Martin’s Wrapped in Rain

Crying with Them Crickets

Top photograph of a sunset in the Everglades by Jean Beaufort via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Brokenness

After Isaiah 33

In the bottom of the hole,

bathed in darkness, then

I feel the hand extended,

thrust down through gloom

and mud, grabbing hold

of me and yanking me

upward through mud and dirt,

pulling me, covered

in filth, pulling me gasping

into the light.

Repeat:

In the midst of brokenness,

in the thick of destruction

and annihilation, left

with no alternatives, options

gone, strategy destroyed,

tactics trashed, nothing left

in my hands, nothing left

to give, then comes

the blessing.

Photograph by Linnaea Mallette via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.