Syrian Refugees Cross Into Uncertainty
Refugees fleeing fighting in Syria in May 2013 relocated to the Zaatari refugee camp in northern Jordan, where they faced dusty days and cold nights in an uncertain existence with no end in sight.
By Tamir Elterman on Publish Date May 8, 2013. Photo by Lynsey Addario for The New York Times.We are honoring the top winners of our Seventh Annual Found Poem Student Contest by publishing their work from June 6 to 17. You’ll be able to read the whole collection here as we go.
Below, a piece by Christina Kwan, taken from a 2014 article, “Behind Barbed Wire, Shakespeare Inspires a Cast of Young Syrians,” and a 2015 article, “The Case for Melancholy.”
Behind Barbed Wire
Behind barbed wire, the sun is ridiculously bright
A wistfulness brooding with pleasures and pain.
Her kingdom, a rocky patch of earth in this sickly city of tents
Paper crowns and plastic jewelry.
Wading
in synthetic wonder: her escape.
Behind barbed wire, decaying in moods of deeply tinted blue
Life swept away in a cloud of dust.
She befriended tortured thoughts and morbid stories
Trouble sleeping, she would watch another twilight, another
gray dawn awaken.
Behind barbed wire, behind a chain-link fence
Her future is her elixir
Her black-and-white movie, her animated film
Ethereal.
O Syria, promise to return this lost generation of Joy.