Rashed Aqrabawi

Oct 24, 2024 | bombmagazine.org | Rashed Aqrabawi |Didi Jackson

Matthew Rohrer’s poems are woven things. Things made up of the life of dreams and waking life; life on earth and death on earth; the self among various other selves. His new collection, Army of Giants (Wave Books, 2024), weaves together short- and long-form poetry that boasts an almost psychedelic dailiness, a humorous sadness, and a wonder about the world and the world beyond the world.

Sep 16, 2024 | bombmagazine.org | Brandon Shimoda |Rashed Aqrabawi |Ayden LeRoux

Talking with the Dead for Eiko OtakeNo body is going to riseout of that moundof wet dirtIt’s not dirt    It’s a bodyI imagined itdryI imaginedmounds everywheremarking the momentsas gravesof where people werenot    over there,    somewhere elselike trees    in pink youthgreet the afterlife+If the people did not transitionfrom life into death,did they die? If they did not die, are they dead? If they are not dead    wherewherewhere . . .

Sep 16, 2024 | bombmagazine.org | Rashed Aqrabawi |Ayden LeRoux

In reading these poems, I’m reminded of a rock formation, spectacularly contoured, enduring the eddying crosscurrents of wind and water. Certainly the poems give an eloquent sense of the forces—both drastic and subtle—that have impressed upon and honed the exquisite particularities of this sensibility: tectonic violences, both present and past; the gravitational attractions of desire, heritage, family; the scouring currents of diaspora.