Episode #088 Additional Notes On Tea - Fady Joudah

Connor and Jack discuss Fady Joudah's, "Additional Notes on Tea" exploring the ways the poem moves around the globe, interrogates history, and deploys the figure of God.

You can find out more about Fady Joudah, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/fady-joudah

Additional Notes On Tea

By: Fady Joudah

In Cairo a boy’s balcony higher than a man’s deathbed.

The boy is sipping tea,

The view is angular like a fracture.

Surrounding the bed, women in wooden chairs.

They signal mourning with a scream.

Family men on the street run up the stairs and drink raven tea.

On the operating table in Solwezi a doctor watches a woman die.

Tea while the anesthetic wears off,

While the blade is waiting, tea.

The doctor says the woman knows god is sleeping

Outside heaven in a tent.

God is a refugee dreaming of tea.

Once upon a time an ocean married a sea to carry tea around.

Land was jealous.

So it turned into desert and gave no one wood for ships.

And when ships became steel,

Land turned into ice.

And when everything melted, everything tasted like tea.

Once upon a time there was a tea party in Boston.

Tea, like history, is a non sequitur.

I prefer it black. The Chinese drink it green.

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