A man comes to an island so that he can be alone – but finds he cannot escape the island’s other visitors: its presiding saints and dead sons, and a rising storm whose clouds loom black and grey as stags.
Batten down.
Handbook 08, Christ, Mountain Road by Rashed Aqrabawi, is a book-length meditation on an interrupted pilgrimage – a search and an escape.
The woman turns to me –
What brings you here?Winter, I answer. I have come to evade it.
Did you know a storm is coming? she asks,
as if the storm was her idea.She seems happy. Fat
fear sings from her. His blue eyesglare, born in America.
When the woman asks me
I tell her I am from Canada.
This is what I say when I don’t want to know you.My countryman!
She says those words. My countryman.The man, dissatisfied, asks
Where is your name from?
Rashed Aqrabawi is a writer and poet living in London. He has been published previously in The Poetry Review, BOMB, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the winner of the 2024 BOMB Poetry Prize. He was born in Amman.
Christ, Mountain Road is published in an edition limited to 25 copies, and priced at £15. Email us to purchase your copy.