You Talking to Me

Buchcover Sprichst du mit mir Löcker Verlag 2016

Poems
Löcker Verlag 2016
On Origins · on Love · on Death

Poems
With drawings by Rima Al-Juburi

“You Talking to Me” deals with the ideas and emotions of homeland, with identity, finding traces, and memory.

“Perfectly poetical and brutally beautiful!”
(ZDF on Susanne Ayoub)

1001 FLIGHT BANS

The sky above Baghdad

belongs to the stars,

the birds,

the wind.

Not to airplanes.

The sky above Baghdad

is a poem.

Rima Al Juburi Zeichnung Die Stadt

 

Rima Al Juburi Krüge
Rima Al Juburi, Jugs

A PHOTO GOES ROUND THE WORLD

The man on his back

looks into the sky

without seeing it

 

Smiling mouth

fine-looking teeth

dynamite in his hand

he is dead

Name Bibi. Age twenty.

A perpetrator. A victim.

A murderer.

 

Explanations

necessary or inevitable

people talk of

punishment

 

He died for justice

his father says

for a better world

Rima Al Juburi Zeichnung Rivers of Babylon
Rima Al Juburi Zeichnung Rivers of Babylon

The poems are illustrated by the painter Rima Al-Juburi, who shares a story with the author: both of them were born into Muslim and Christian family arrangements, and both now live in Vienna.

Rima Al-Juburi, born in Wels, Austria, in 1968, grew up in Baghdad. After studying architecture at the University of Baghdad she moved to Vienna, where she lives today as a freelance painter and art designer. She established the arts and crafts studio “Seven Eyes“.