AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

The Poetry Magazine Podcast: Su Cho and Tariq Luthun on Joy, Apocalypse, Crying, and Pokémon

(If you notice a mistake in the transcript, please let us know by emailing [email protected])

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Tariq Luthun:

(READS EXCERPT FROM “I Want to Die”)

Joy—what a lovely thing
to feel. But, then again, the word
doom exists

Su Cho: Welcome to the Poetry Magazine Podcast. I’m Su Cho. Today, I have the great honor of sitting down with Tariq Luthun, a Palestinian writer and community organizer based in Detroit, Michigan. Welcome to the podcast.

Tariq Luthun: Hi, thanks for having me.

Su Cho: Yeah, I’m really excited for our conversation, because the poem in this month’s issue of Poetry, titled, “I Want to Die,” has been speaking to me all week. And I—it’s one of those rare poems that I just can’t shake off my body. And it’s an interesting one that’s been following me around. So, I’d actually love to start our conversation by listening to you read the first half of the poem.

Tariq Luthun: Sure.

(READS EXCERPT)

I Want to Die

in the arms of everyone who’s ever loved me, each
appendage a tendril expanding into the ether
of every moment I am leaving behind. Know this: I have dabbled

in the enterprise of affection; cut my teeth on what it means
to hold and be held. Behold: everything that has ever been
labeled “mine” was stolen.

From me, but also now by me. The land:
from us, and now the land
we were stolen to. I belong to nothing

but my friends—those who have entrusted me
with the gift of caring for them. For years, I trained myself
to not feel for anything to spare myself of having to feel

for everything: no partner, no child; my parents will
soon be gone too. Can you blame me? I watched men
and women say things they don’t mean and claim lives

from bodies they won’t ever eat. Some can’t stomach
culling the protein from a fly, but drop before the silhouette
of a gun. Have you ever fallen for something empty

as a word? For me, it was  joy—the way it bounces
when spoken. For years, I would whisper it hopelessly
to the moon. I thought nothing of it

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Su Cho: Thank you so much. I mean, I’m gonna be that person. And I’m gonna say I was immediately drawn to the title, “I Want to Die.” And I can’t help but say, you know, it’s a bleeding title, where the title leads directly into the poem. And I was wondering, what made you decide to start the poem there, with that bleeding title?

Tariq Luthun: I’ve been thinking a lot about mortality, a lot about—I mean, also growing up with depression and anxiety, a lot of like, mad illnesses, or mad identifications, I’ve always been curious about what it means to say a thing, to kind of give it space, and then let it go. And so I think for me, being able to put that in the title, to express like, yeah, there are moments where, like, I’m exhausted and burned out and just want this all to be over, but it doesn’t necessarily mean I want to end. I just want to find peace. And I really wanted to obfuscate that immediately by saying like, yeah, I do want to die one day, but I would hope it comes peacefully, I would hope it would become something on my terms, in a loving setting, or after having departed a loving world. And so that’s why I kind of bled that title into the next line, which is immediately like, “in the arms of everyone who’s ever loved me.”

Su Cho: Yeah. And I actually wanted to ask you, you just said, you had things that you considered quote-unquote, like, mad identifications? Could you actually say a little more about what you mean by that?

Tariq Luthun: Yeah, I think a lot of people use the word mental illness. And that I think, in a lot of ways makes it seem as though we are identifying ourselves as ill. But I think mad is more of a disability justice framework to identify some of the things that might be seen as invisible disabilities, for people to kind of identify with, and kind of reclaim the narrative of madness and what it means. So it is definitely a recognition of the word “mad.” But there is a whole, like, subset of disability justice advocates that identify as mad and typically those identifications are for people who have some of these more difficult to see conditions.

Su Cho: Yeah, thank you for talking about that a little more. You know, you’re a community organizer based in Detroit. And I would love to know, you were just talking about your work with disability justice, like how you ended up there and how you got there.

Tariq Luthun: The disability justice movement in Detroit is actually very much led by elders. And so, being the youngest person, and also the most tech savvy person available, I was doing a lot of like, the more digital age type of stuff that they weren’t fully comfortable with. And so, I’ve been engaged (MEOW IN BACKGROUND)—oh, I’m sorry, my cat just meowed.

Su Cho: Aw, that was a cutest meow, I was like, what is that sound. (LAUGHS)

Tariq Luthun: Sorry to mess up the recording. But so what happened is, what I was gonna say was, I don’t mean that to sound prejudiced towards elders, but it just happened to be the case where I was able to do a lot of the more branding, quote-unquote, work of like, trying to get more members, get people engaged. I mean, I think I’ve technically always been engaged in it just because it is an intersectional movement. Being Palestinian, I mean, most of my cousins, or my uncles and people back home, they’ve dealt with some type of disability. I know so many people who have been maimed, because of what they face as Palestinians, living back in Palestine, and Gaza specifically. And so, to be in the disability justice movement, more actively is something that just kind of felt natural to me, because it was always something around me. I also used to volunteer in hospitals growing up. Like, I’ve always been very adjacent to people overcoming disabilities, and trying to challenge their lack of accessibility in many spaces.

Su Cho: You mentioned family. And actually, I wanted to ask you like, the big or small question, depending on how you feel, of, you know, like, how you got to where you are today being like, in the States, right?

Tariq Luthun: Yeah.

Su Cho: And I don’t know, I always frame it that way, because when I get asked that question, depending on my mood, I always say, “I have a short answer and a long answer, or like my funny answer and my serious answer.”

Tariq Luthun: Right.

Su Cho: And so, I mean, we can start where you want to start.

Tariq Luthun: Yeah, so I guess the main story I tell is the story before I even existed of my father having moved to America and technically, Turtle Island, but just for folks to know, this Anishinaabe land that I’m on. Yeah, my father moved to the States many, many years ago to get an education. He actually was in Arizona. And then my uncle came to Michigan, and my grandfather was like, “I’m not paying for both of you to be in separate states. Go live with your brother.”

Su Cho: (LAUGHS)

Tariq Luthun: And so that’s how my dad ended up basing himself in Michigan, went to school, got a job, and then worked in the United States for a couple of years before eventually going back to Palestine, where he entered into a traditional courtship process with my mother, who lived in Gaza. So yeah, I’m not sure where to stop this story.

Su Cho: (LAUGHS) You can go as long as you want.

Tariq Luthun: But yeah, my parents basically started off here a year before I was born, together, though, my father was here with a little bit of experience in America before me. And then I came in and proceeded to be a challenge for them. Because I was a really shy kid growing up. I cried all the time. Like, even when I was in school, I, whenever I would get like, bad grades, I would like, hide it from them.

Su Cho: Oh my god, me too. Yeah, say more.

Tariq Luthun: I became an amazing forger,

Su Cho: (LAUGHS)

Tariq Luthun: because whenever you get a bad grade or anything, you would have to take it to your parents. And I was like, “Nah, I’m not letting them down in this way. They gave up too much.”

Su Cho: Wow.

Tariq Luthun: “I’m going to like, hide it from them.”

Su Cho: That’s so deep, that’s a deep reason.

Tariq Luthun: (LAUGHS) Yeah, that’s me at 10 years old. And then I finally got caught in like, the fourth grade. And then I found out that I needed glasses, which had helped me. And this was what, when going back to disability justice, right, like, for a long time, I was struggling in school for a couple of years. Luckily, it didn’t really impact me when I got home because I could read my books. But like, I couldn’t see the projector. I couldn’t see the screen for a while, didn’t know why I couldn’t see it. Until like, I had to actually go get it checked out. And that took many months for me. And I can only imagine how many people can’t get things checked out, because they don’t have the resources or the healthcare or any of that. And so I saw like, my life drastically change when I could start to see again, with the aid of glasses, but also, just being mindful of like, having the ability to ask the question was such a hard thing for me to do as a shy, anxious kid growing up.

Su Cho: Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing those stories. And I, I just realized that we both grew up in the Midwest. I grew up in Indiana, after my family immigrated, so I pretty much did my 1st grade to 12th grade in Indiana. I didn’t hide my bad grades for like, really dutiful and good reasons like you. I just hid them because I was scared of the consequences. (LAUGHS)

Tariq Luthun: No, no, I was totally scared. No, I definitely was terrified as well. Like, that’s the auxiliary reason, but the first reason is like, “No, I’m not gonna bother them with this.” The second one is “Oh, I’m gonna get in trouble.”

Su Cho: Yeah, okay. Thank you for admitting that.

Tariq Luthun: I wasn’t some, like, stoic 10-year-old.

Su Cho: Yeah.

Tariq Luthun: But I will say actually for my mom, another story for her, because I feel like I haven’t amplified her enough.

Su Cho: Yeah, yeah.

Tariq Luthun: They knew my mom by first name because I was actually the most forgetful student. And so she was always coming to school to drop something off that I forgot at home, whether it was like a lunch bag, my homework. It was really a power pairing for me and my mom, I was the crying kid and she was constantly visiting mother.

Su Cho: (LAUGHS) Are you the youngest in the family?

Tariq Luthun: I’m the oldest actually, I’m the guinea pig.

Su Cho: You’re the oldest, and then you were the crier. Oh, usually it’s the other way around.

Tariq Luthun: I mean, eventually, so there’s this book called Bud, Not Buddy, where he doesn’t cry for the longest time, he’s been through so much trauma and has lost so much. And then one moment, he just like cries so much, and they give him like a name based on the tears. But for me actually it was the opposite. Like I cried all the time, and I just hit a point where like, I never cried again. So.

Su Cho: Wow.

Tariq Luthun: So, it sounds a little sad and depressing. But like, yeah, it was, it’s hard for me to like—poetry has become the mode for me to express myself and to process and to really find catharsis. And so when I say things like “I want to die,” that is the poem trying to help me engage with these ideas, these thoughts, these feelings that maybe I suppress, whether I know it or not.

Su Cho: Yeah, thank you for sharing like your, you know, your feelings when you were a child and growing up and talking about how you process them now, because I think that’s why I was so drawn to this poem is because I felt like I was getting a real time processing of all these feelings that are really hard to compress and distill into something you can understand easily. And so I was wondering, could you read the rest of the poem for us?

Tariq Luthun: Yeah.

(READS EXCERPT)

Have you ever fallen for something empty

as a word? For me, it was  joy—the way it bounces
when spoken. For years, I would whisper it hopelessly
to the moon. I thought nothing of it

until I found myself brave enough to chant before the sun—
it was in this light that I came to find
my peoples. I took shape among them:

Joy. Joy. Joy—what a lovely thing
to feel. But, then again, the word
doom exists—sometimes

it’s almost too fun not to say. Apocalypse.
Even cicada sounds lovely
with the right inflection. I wonder if

it’s stronger to nestle into the chest
of one’s sadness, or to lie about it.
Once, as a child, I spent a late summer night poking holes

into the window mesh that shielded us
against the bugs we had stolen
away from. Each puncture

a compromise with those creatures
seeking refuge. As I did it, I repeated the syllables:

sim-muh-nim, sim-muh-nim

caught between cinnamon and synonym. Letting each letter
pass through until the end of the word. I imagine that
when this world ends, it will happen like a boy

yearning to be released from a warm room—
little by little, not all at once; unbothered
by the thought of  losing his place.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Su Cho: Thank you, just, just processing my heebie-jeebies, the good ones. (LAUGHS) Yeah, I just really love how when we get to the end the poem we just build into like a buffet of words. Right? And I just love listening to you say them like joy, Apocalypse, cicada, synonym, cinnamon. And obviously, when I say it, it doesn’t sound as nice, right?

Tariq Luthun: Sounds great.

Su Cho: Oh, thank you. I would just love to know how these words came to you for this poem. You know, for me, sounds, when I write poems, they transport me back to my childhood because that’s when I used Korean the most. And so I couldn’t help but wonder, yeah, if these words take you back to a certain time, or if they just came to you, because you, you know, like the way it sounds.

Tariq Luthun: A funny story is like, I’ve always been a reader. I’ve always been somebody who was really good with words and really interested in expanding his vocabulary to the point where like, I was in third grade once and my teacher, she was like, “Tariq, how do you know all these words?” And I was like, “Pokémon.”

Su Cho: (LAUGHS)

Tariq Luthun: Like, they’re using words like “accuracy,” “effectiveness,”

Su Cho: Yeah, you gotta battle your Pokémon.

Tariq Luthun: Exactly. So like, I was like, learning these really big words while also reading a lot. I don’t know, I just always felt like I was inhaling every word around me.

Su Cho: I love talking about sounds and words. And now I have the Pokémon song stuck in my head. (LAUGHS)

Tariq Luthun: Which one? Like the “gotta catch ’em all” one? Or the friend one?

Su Cho: Yeah, the (SINGS) Pokémon, gotta catch ’em all.

Tariq Luthun: (SINGS) You and me.

Su Cho: Yeah, yep.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Tariq Luthun: Words like “Apocalypse” are things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I mean, I mentioned earlier, I’ve been thinking a lot about mortality. I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept the poem ends with. Like, I don’t think Apocalypse is going to happen all at once. I think that it is little by little. I feel like Apocalypse or apocalyptic things are happening every day that we don’t always realize, or we do realize or choose to ignore.

Su Cho: What are some of the ideas that you were thinking about? Like were there writers you were thinking about, different theorists? I don’t know how you think about the Apocalypse. But I’m very curious.

Tariq Luthun: There’s, there’s always so many writers and thinkers. But I mean, for me honestly, like this was definitely born out of like, having grown up in a religious household. So I was thinking a lot about Apocalypse from like, the ways it’s been told to us in religious context, but also, movies. I was always watching movies where like, it’s like, some cataclysmic event is happening. But I don’t think that’s actually how the world ends. I feel like it ends little by little, it ends where, you know, some people, the ozone disintegrates above them, their trees are burned, things like that. And I remember even like, post the 2016 election, people were like, “You know, we were okay under the Bush years, we’ll be okay.” I was like, “But who is the ‘we’? Like, who made it out? The people who are talking made it out, but there are so many people who didn’t survive.” And so, when I think about that as a small apocalypse, I wanted to kind of give that time, I wanted to give that space in the work, because it has lots of space in my mind. And so going back to like, the religious stuff, there are things I don’t always do. Like, I don’t always pray as much as I should. I don’t know if that’s like something my parents will listen to this podcast, and be like, “You told people you don’t do that?”

Su Cho: (LAUGHS)

Tariq Luthun: And I was like, I should be honest. But you know, I do fast. I do some stuff like that. And so like, but Islamically, traditionally, prayer is a mandatory act. And if you’re not doing it, you, you’ll be held accountable for it. And so I’m like, ah, I think a lot about Apocalypse as like a deadline, sometimes, like, can I reach my best self before it’s too late? And so part of why I wanted to write this poem was, it’s a new mode of writing for me, because I’ve always kind of written as a journalist in a lot of ways, reporting what has happened. But I would love to start writing, and I think I’m starting to write poems that are world building, where I’m, I’m trying to explore what the world could be. Before the deadline of Apocalypse does come our way, if it does come our way. You know, the work of being an organizer or being a writer, being even just an optimistic person is sometimes fraught with skepticism from others, but I feel like you know, we have nothing to lose except for ourselves and the people around us, so why not start now?

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Su Cho: Yeah, I love that sentiment, why not start now? And I have to ask, you know, I think you said you consider yourself more faithful than religious, and you’re talking about the Apocalypse and stories. Do you remember like, the first apocalyptic story you heard growing up?

Tariq Luthun: Yeah, I mean, well it stuck with me because I was like, going to Sunday school for Muslims like, growing up learning about the Quran, learning about, you know, basically biblical end of the world type stuff. So like, that was the first story I was ever met with, which is a story in which like, there are a lot of signs, actually, for the end of the world. There are certain things that are prescribed or stated in certain hadiths and stories in Muslim lore that say, like, you know, if this happens, the end of the world is near. And there was also the saying by the prophet, Prophet Muhammad, salaa allah ealayh wasalam—peace be upon him in Arabic is what I just said—where like he said, “From the end of my life to the Apocalypse are like this.” And you can’t see me, but I am placing two fingers together in a crossed format, like my pointer and my index finger. He’s saying, like, they’re this close. But then my mom was like, “Yeah, but the world has existed for eons. So like, technically, ‘this close’ could mean anything.” But in my head, I’m like, “Yo, global warming is happening. There may not be clean water or accessible water in like 20 years.” And you know, in a lot of ways that’s part of why I kind of pushed away from religion is like, I don’t want my goodness or my capacity for goodness to be tethered to a reward. I want it to be something that is inspired naturally.

Su Cho: Mm.

Tariq Luthun: You know, how does one inspire, I guess, a mode of being without tethering to an institution like religion?

Su Cho: Yeah. And it’s really interesting, because in the poem, right, these are, this is one of my favorite lines. You wrote, “Joy. Joy. Joy—what a lovely thing/to feel. But, then again, the word/doom exists—sometimes/it’s almost too fun not to/say. Apocalypse.” And I love how joy and Apocalypse and doom are all together in a stanza, you know, and what can we do to be good without thinking about the reward? And then I feel like we’re getting all philosophical. And it’s like, what is goodness? Does goodness even exist, right? But what I wanted to know was like, yeah, what does joy mean to you in your everyday life?

Tariq Luthun: Yeah.

Su Cho: Because I feel like in the poem, it’s something incredibly filled with paradoxical feeling. But also, if you repeat a word enough times it becomes empty.

Tariq Luthun: Yeah.

Su Cho: I would love to know, yeah, what does joy mean to you?

Tariq Luthun: I mean, I write after a lot of other people who have already shared, I mean, specifically, a lot of my friends, many of them who are Black writers have been implementing the word and the notions of joy in the face of so much violence and harm towards their bodies, and towards our bodies in a lot of ways, for people of color and people of marginalized backgrounds. And so joy for me was something I never really said. Like, going back to the Pokémon, like Nurse Joy was like,

Su Cho: (LAUGHS)

Tariq Luthun: the first time I ever, like, saw the word “joy.” And I didn’t even think about or appreciate joy for such a long time. And I think, for a long time, especially, you know, with the mad identifications, like, being somebody who’s anxious, dealing with ADHD, things like that, I was just like, “Can I even experience happiness?” Like “happiness” was the word I was looking for. And then it was like, “Well, maybe it’s contentedness.” And so for me, I lived a really long time, and I still think for most of my, the majority of my days, I spend in contentedness, where I’m fine with things as they are. But I’m not sure if y’all have ever seen this meme. It’s a Drake meme, actually. And I hate implicating Drake.

Su Cho: (LAUGHS)

Tariq Luthun: He’s such a figure for me to use as an analysis, a point of analysis. But there’s a meme where it’s like he’s at a party or something, and it’s that whole idea of like, you know, you’re having a good time, and so it’s one shot of him like, being happy. And the next shot is, but then you remember something?

Su Cho: Oh, yeah, I think I’ve seen this.

Tariq Luthun: Yeah, that’s kind of how I exist. I’m like, oh, you’re vibing out—I don’t go to parties, but I guess, you’re vibing out, what’s a thing that I would do instead of—I went to the plant Dad gathering, and like, you know, I’m having a good time. But then you remember that the Amazon’s forest is burning. And so like, that’s kind of like how my existence has been.

Su Cho: Oh man.

Tariq Luthun: I’m like, “Oh, like, you’re enjoying yourself playing basketball, pickup ball with your friends in Detroit or Dearborn or wherever.” But then I’m like, “Oh, but we’re on stolen Indigenous land.” So I’m like, what is joy? Like, what is—I guess you can start thinking of like, big J Joy and little J joy.

Su Cho: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Talk, say more about that. Yeah. What do you mean?

Tariq Luthun: No, I just said that for the first time in my life, so I haven’t thought about it enough. (LAUGHS)

Su Cho: No, that’s okay. You can think about it while you talk. That’s what these podcasts are for.

Tariq Luthun: So yeah, so, I guess for me, you know, there’s pleasure, there’s contentedness, there is happiness, there’s joy. And I think joy is something that, I don’t know, it just, I don’t know how to explain it other than to say it’s a sensation of being held.

Su Cho: Mm.

Tariq Luthun: And that’s why in the poem I said, I’ve held and been held, “Behold,” because I think that there is something sustaining about joy. In the conversations I was having, it just felt like a more honest pursuit or arc towards a mode of happiness because it was able to acknowledge one can pursue a pleasure while also acknowledging a pain or acknowledging a harm or acknowledging the ways in which like, not all of our consumptions are ethical, and so sometimes, not all of our joys or our, you know, happinesses are devoid of sadness. And I think joy, I think holds space for that, or at least I would like to believe it does.

Su Cho: Mm.

Tariq Luthun: Also, it’s a fun word. I like the word “joy.”

Su Cho: Yeah? Joy. I kind of don’t like the word joy.

Tariq Luthun: It’s too short sometimes.

Su Cho: Yeah. And I feel it’s surprisingly harsh. I think it’s the J and the Y. I don’t like it, but I want to feel it, like you. Yeah.

Tariq Luthun: I think it’s the “oy,” the “oy” sounds so nice. But then doom is, it’s such a, it’s such an interesting word, because it doesn’t see him as harmful as it is.

Su Cho: No, it’s so soft.

Tariq Luthun: Yeah.

Su Cho: If doom held me and held us, I’d be like, “Ooo.” (LAUGHS)

Tariq Luthun: Ooo,

Su Cho: (LAUGHS) So comforting, yeah.

Tariq Luthun: This was like the bad boys of vocabulary.

Su Cho: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Tariq Luthun: Doom wears a leather jacket and rides a motorcycle.

Su Cho: Yeah, but is really good at cuddling. Yeah, absolutely.

Tariq Luthun: Oh, god.

Su Cho: Okay, where is this conversation (LAUGHING)—and so all this talk about feeling. I mean, you mentioned you know, when you were a kid and growing up, you couldn’t stop crying. And I mean, for me, when I was growing up, and till this day, like, I hate crying, and I just put it off as far as long as I can.

Tariq Luthun: No tears club.

Su Cho: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So when did you stop? Do you remember? Was there a moment?

Tariq Luthun: No, I think I just broke. No, I think I just broke. I was like, no, like, there’s no more tears left in me. I’ve done them all. They’ve all happened for me. Because like, I just, because that’s the thing like I was so—I grew up being bullied, by the way. So like, I was always somebody who was being picked on, being bullied. And that was actually like, the weird thing is I was, I grew up in a, in Dearborn, which is, you know, like I said, the largest Arab city in the country. It’s a little Arabia. And so in a lot of ways, like, people who looked like me were the ones bullying.

Su Cho: Mm.

Tariq Luthun: And the other thing you know, there’s also lots of different obfuscations there because like, I was one of the only Palestinians growing up in my community. For the longest time—I learned this since, but like for the longest time, I thought being a Sunni background Muslim was, meant you were a minority, when in reality actually Sunni is the global majority. But in Dearborn, the population is heavily Lebanese and Iraqi. And those people happen to be mostly Shīʿa or Shiite. And so growing up, I was always, I wasn’t bullied for these reasons. I want to be clear about that. But growing up, I never met other Palestinians, really. I never really hung out with any Palestinians in school, or in my sports teams, or any of that stuff. I didn’t really meet more Palestinians, I’d say until like, I maybe got to college and started like, participating with like, organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine. But yeah, so I grew up in Dearborn, bullied a lot, for a number of things, body image, my shyness, but then I think at a certain point, I just broke. And maybe broke is a harsh word, but I just, I guess, I became numb. I became numb to a lot of things. And then, you know, I got to college, and, you know, my organizing actually started with like, sexual violence prevention. I had so many friends who are women who had had stories of abuse and assault. And so, I was organizing as a literary activist, but I was also organizing as like a sexual violence prevention person. And so like, one of the things that we did was we made people do trainings on like, how to prevent sexual assault, how to help hold space for people post-assault. And then we tried to advocate for people during open mics to be like, “Hey, these are people that have done the training, if you want to talk to anybody about anything that you’ve gone through.” That was something born out of me not having had that ability or that invitation to discuss, right? So when I stopped being able to cry, when I stopped being able to express myself with these physical manifestations, in the form of tears, and had it all be in writing, the writing still didn’t go anywhere. I had to still share that writing, I still had to put that work out in the world. And so I think the act of writing my poems, and then publishing the poems or going to an open mic, is to be able to have conversations like the one we’re having today, where if I had not put the word out there, this conversation doesn’t happen.

Su Cho: Mm. Yeah, I feel like just listening to you, I feel like for you, joy, joy is being able to chart out different paths for different people. And I feel like there’s a lot of joy for you there. When was the last time you cried?

Tariq Luhun: I don’t really cry, except for when I’m, when I’m really feeling my poem.

Su Cho: Mm.

Tariq Luhun: Because like I said earlier, for me, poetry, the writing of it is the catharsis, it is the thing that I do to process and experience, like, yes, there is okay, yes, you feel miserable, or yes, you feel so weighed down by everything, but like, what’s beyond that? What is beyond that notion? And so for me, poetry is where I’m like, okay, you didn’t cry, you didn’t process this when it happened. But you’re processing it now, in the safety of your own home, or the safety of your own mind, I guess, because sometimes I’m actually not writing—I actually, most of the poems I write, I don’t write on the page right away, I say them out loud. And I just say what comes to me kind of like, I sing the poem to myself.

Su Cho: Mm.

Tariq Luhun: And that act, like, saying certain words, feeling them come off my tongue, is how I’ve come to process a lot. And so, I guess I mean, the last time I cried was like, I was just reciting this poem a couple of times, just practicing it, because I felt like, for me, I don’t actually stop at writing the poem. I like to internalize the poems I write, because I know that if I wrote it out of a mode of catharsis, it means that there is something I’m trying to tell myself. And for me, I don’t write because I want to excise an experience, I write because I want to hold an experience properly, and then internalize that in my growth and my progression as a person.

Su Cho: I want to ask this question, but I felt an impulse that I shouldn’t, but that means I should. (LAUGHS) And so, no, it’s really, when you say cry, like, I imagine like, I’m really fascinated by the way you describe drafting a poem, right? You sing it to yourself, and I think that’s really beautiful. You said that’s, you know, that’s the last time you cried when you were practicing the poem. And I’m just curious, like, what do you mean by crying? Like, what does that look like for you? Like, is it like a beautiful single tear? Or are you, like, sobbing? Or like, what kind of cry? I feel like there’s so many different kinds of crying. Yeah, and I just have to know what you mean.

Tariq Luthun: Yeah. So, okay, so, the last time I teared up, I don’t know if I cried, like,

Su Cho: Oh okay.

Tariq Luthun: you know, the tears welled in my eyes. So that happens often when I’m writing, but also when I’m processing the things that go into the writing, right. So we talked about Apocalypse, we talked about indigenous communities, we talked about disability justice, we talked about all these things. I mean, for me, being Palestinian, like I’ve always grown up with, like, Al Jazeera playing in the background, watching as I’m seeing people who are maimed and having their lifeless or bloody bodies and corpses carried into ambulances and stretchers. And so like, I grew up with that. Like I was four or five years old watching that. And then growing up even more and having access to like, local news and seeing, like, the stuff that we see on social media, with police killing Black folks. And so sometimes it’s not even the poem itself that makes me cry. It is like processing, how do we seize this ever-expanding sense of doom and try to channel it into something that is equitable, and just for all peoples, not just some people. And so that overwhelms me a lot. That makes me like, tear up a little bit. But like, I think, because I don’t want people to, like, take away from this podcast and be like, “This dude cries at his own poems?”

Su Cho: (LAUGHS)

Tariq Luthun: Like, no, I cry, I cry at the impulse behind the poem, right. I cry at the thing that inspired the poem. I just, I don’t know, I feel very deeply about things. And maybe that’s, and that’s one of the things I talked about, I was trying to get at earlier. I don’t know how to teach people how to feel empathy. I don’t—that’s one thing I’ve been like, trying to grasp before getting back into classrooms. I used to do a lot of workshops when I was younger, but the pandemic happened. And then I was like, well, I don’t want to just go back to like, teaching words, like, I want to teach feeling. But I need to understand my feeling and my process first before I do that, because otherwise, we’ll have like a lot of rambling experiences, like we are now on this podcast.

Su Cho: (LAUGHS)

Tariq Luthun: So I’m trying to like, triangulate what it is about like, what kind of—because like, I’ve also been thinking a lot about like, if I ever want to have children.

Su Cho: Mm-hmm.

Tariq Luthun: And so like, what do I do to teach empathy in a way that isn’t tied to religion, in a way that is tied to, like, feeling deeply? Because I look at the world and I’m like, how can people do certain things to other people? That is I think what comes out in the poetry and like, the tears, like I’m processing things, crying, and then I’m like, okay, what do I do with this?

Su Cho: Mm. And I love that question you just posed to yourself, “What do I do with this?” Yeah, all this conversation about world building and words and community and what joy is, whether or not, you know, we feel it and manifest it through crying, right, or other things, it’s given me a lot to think about, especially since, as you said, when we started talking, right, the Apocalypse is kind of happening all the time, everywhere. It just depends on where you look at it. And you’ve taught me a lot about how we can see. Or you taught me a lot about how we could imagine the world that we want to be in. And so yeah, thank you, Tariq.

Tariq Luthun: Thank you.

Su Cho: Could we hear the poem one last time?

Tariq Luthun: Yeah.

(READS POEM)

I Want to Die

in the arms of everyone who’s ever loved me, each
appendage a tendril expanding into the ether
of every moment I am leaving behind. Know this: I have dabbled

in the enterprise of affection; cut my teeth on what it means
to hold and be held. Behold: everything that has ever been
labeled “mine” was stolen.

From me, but also now by me. The land:
from us, and now the land
we were stolen to. I belong to nothing

but my friends—those who have entrusted me
with the gift of caring for them. For years, I trained myself
to not feel for anything to spare myself of having to feel

for everything: no partner, no child; my parents will
soon be gone too. Can you blame me? I watched men
and women say things they don’t mean and claim lives

from bodies they won’t ever eat. Some can’t stomach
culling the protein from a fly, but drop before the silhouette
of a gun. Have you ever fallen for something empty

as a word? For me, it was  joy—the way it bounces
when spoken. For years, I would whisper it hopelessly
to the moon. I thought nothing of it

until I found myself brave enough to chant before the sun—
it was in this light that I came to find
my peoples. I took shape among them:

Joy. Joy. Joy—what a lovely thing
to feel. But, then again, the word
doom exists—sometimes

it’s almost too fun not to say. Apocalypse.
Even cicada sounds lovely
with the right inflection. I wonder if

it’s stronger to nestle into the chest
of one’s sadness, or to lie about it.
Once, as a child, I spent a late summer night poking holes

into the window mesh that shielded us
against the bugs we had stolen
away from. Each puncture

a compromise with those creatures
seeking refuge. As I did it, I repeated the syllables:

sim-muh-nim, sim-muh-nim

caught between cinnamon and synonym. Letting each letter
pass through until the end of the word. I imagine that
when this world ends, it will happen like a boy

yearning to be released from a warm room—
little by little, not all at once; unbothered
by the thought of  losing his place.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Su Cho: A big thanks to Tariq Luthun. Luthun is a Palestinian writer and community organizer based in Metro Detroit. He is the author of How the Water Holds Me from Bull City Press in 2020. You can read Tariq’s poem, “I Want to Die,” in the November 2022 issue of Poetry in print and online. This show is produced by Rachel James. The music in this episode came from Resavoir, Alabaster DePlume, John McCowen, Rob Mazurek, and Irreversible Entanglements. Okay, that’s it. Until next time, be well, stay safe and thanks for listening.

(MUSIC FADES OUT)