Poet Brief: Khaled Mattawa

Born in Libya, and migrating to the United States for a college education and MFA, Mattawa currently teaches at the MFA program at Michigan. He never left his heritage behind, as his poems are infused with references to Middle-eastern places and practices along with commentary (usually not positive) on American culture. I appreciate his sense of irony and dark humor, as well as his sharp criticisms of societies, governments, and human nature as a whole, its history being anything but flattery.



His series, “Echo and Elixir,” includes engrossing poems that are absurd but so pressingly relevant. Without rhyme or any rigid structure, the poems still resonate with life and a strong rhythm. They are quickly paced and make twists and turns that can leave the reader behind if he or she does not keep up. I love the figuring of the discussion between the speaker and cab driver in this poem – the figurative treatment of language and the ballsy references to historic events.

Echo & Elixir 2

Cairo’s taxi drivers speak to me in English.
I answer, and they say your Arabic is good.
How long have you been with us? All my life
I tell them, but I’m never believed.
They speak to me in Farsi, speak to me in Greek,
and I answer with mountains of gold and silver,
ghost ships sailing the weed-choked seas.
And when they speak to me in Spanish,
I say Moriscos and Alhambra
I say Jews rescued by Ottoman boats.
And when they speak to me in Portuguese,
all my life I tell them, coffee, cocoa,
Indians and poisoned spears.
I say Afonsso king of Bikongo writing
Manuel to free his enslaved sons.
And Cairo’s taxi drivers tell me
your Arabic is surprisingly good.
Then they speak to me in Italian,
and I tell them how I lay swaddled
a month’s walk from here. I tell them
camps in the desert, barbed wire, wives
and daughters dying, camels frothing disease
the sand stretching an endless pool
And they say so good so good.
How long have you been with us?
All my life, but I’m never believed.
Then they speak to me in French,
and I answer Jamila, Leopold, Stanley,
baskets of severed hands and feet.
I say the horror, battles of Algiers.
And they speak to me in English
and I say Lucknow, Arbenz. I say indigo,
Hiroshima, continents soaked in tea.
I play the drum beat of stamps. I invoke
Mrs. Cummings, U.S. consul in Athens,
I say Ishi, Custer, Wounded Knee.
And Cairo’s taxi drivers tell me
your Arabic is unbelievably good.
Tell the truth now, tell the truth,
how long have you been with us?
I say my first name is little lion,
my last name is broken branch.
I sing “Happiness uncontainable”
and “fields greening in March”
until I’m sad and tired of truth,
and as usual I’m never believed.
Then they lead me through congestion,
gritty air, narrow streets crowded with
Pepsi and Daewoo and the sunken faces
of the poor. And when we arrive, Cairo’s
taxi drivers and I speak all the languages
of the world, and we argue and argue about
corruption, disillusionment, the missed chances,
the wicked binds, the cataclysmic fares.