The Abandoned Stone House in Damascus
Don’t
ask me what side I am with!
Don’t
ask me about the outcome!
They say rain won’t wash the indelible blood splattered in the streets, the moans and cries of children resonate in my aching ears, filling each crack and corner of my heart. Will anyone open doors and windows wide, let the wind in to erase the bitter clouds of gunpowder? Faces smeared with dust and sweat all look alike, come and go as they please, their footsteps resonate in my temples as over worn out, stretched out drums. My walls yearn for the daily smell of freshly cut herbs, for the warmth of the hearth, the familiar sight of the iron pot hanging over glowing coals. Once, the simmering stew was singing with spices and children played under the shade of the olive tree. I can still hear their mother’s humming while separating lentils from stone.
First
published by Mizna
From The Taste of the
Earth (Press 53 2019)
How the Song Turns into a Legend
We
all have but one song, spend a lifetime
looking for ways to say it,
as one recites an unending poem,
a
chanson de geste,
a canto, or an epic.
What
happens then if you whisper it only to yourself,
burying it deeper every day?
Wouldn’t it wilt as petals pressed
between
the pages of a book?
And couldn’t a garden die of indifference?
But
take any couple, an encounter, turn it into a legend,
make it last...
Their story told and retold,
ritualized by repetition,
until
their stature grows, their eyes brighten,
until their voice is heard,
their sin
forgiven...
Recount
tales in tongues, in parables, uttered in public squares,
whispered in corners
in sotto voce,
from mouth to mouth,
hear
a mother’s voice warn her children
with a half-smile,
witness puppets parody star-crossed lovers in street
fairs,
in jest, in awe,
in
ever-changing roles and settings.
Watch words form lines, notes, scripts, scores written
in scrolls,
in
parchment, in manuscripts folded in folio,
in quarto,
scribbled
in notebooks, in recipe books,
in brown paper, engraved in stone, in bronze,
gold or ivory,
transcribed,
transformed,
until
only names are left untouched.
When
so many variations deafen the original song,
then, and only then,
the
images retain their spell,
become
universal,
art legitimizing what could never endure.
First published by Puerto
del Sol
From Tea in Heliopolis
(Press 53 2013)
Mobilis in Mobili
Watch
how some people seem to be taking notes, but if we look closely, their pens
race over the page, tracing cuneiform characters, arabesques, spirals intertwined
in wildest vines, mysterious glyphs, oftentimes starting with a square or a
circle they will randomly fill with parallel lines or curves, until the figure
grows into a Rorschach stain in which they discover the extent--or limits--of
their talent. And now that words refuse
to follow the rows assigned to them, demand a life of their own, I find myself
scribbling in concentric circles as if I were an insect lost inside a rosebud
whirling like a dervish caught in a jinn’s bottle until a flower emerges from
the wraps and folds of his flying gown, his bent head a dark pistil deep inside
a convolvulus and does it matter if it is not an arum or a delphinium?
I add more petals opening their wings, then a stem growing into a stalk, but it is closer to a bird standing on one foot, a cormorant, maybe, or a seagull, and with a few more feathers an Aztec headdress begs for a face, but I need not decide if it will wear a jaguar mask or bear a shield, I will fill empty spaces, erase borders, remapping my colonized realm until a boat emerges calling for a prow, a triangle for a mast, its sails ready to swell, billowing with the whim of the winds and a slight twist of the pen, almost floating on the tip of the white foam breaking into droplets over the glistening ship as if stopped in motion, a mobilis in mobili, until I can feel the mist over my face and around me the pull of the waves reaching me inside the captain’s cabin where I am all alone bent over folds of maps, feeling the drift of the current guiding my pen as it slides along the mahogany desk, dragging me down over the wavering wooden floor.
First
published by Poet Lore.
From
Tea in Heliopolis (Press 53 2013)
Sounds in the Attic
Fluttering wings wrapped in
shimmering muslin veils dance around
the
broken planks, a gaping wound in the
hardwood floor littered
with scattered down, love
letters flying away from torn photographs.
A whisper breaks the rhythm
of the foot beats: a tree is unearthed, its
roots bleed, veins sapping roots
of my heart, throbbing as a
frightened sparrow held tightly
in a palm.
Hungry moon, do not lure
me into your maddened circle.
Don’t you see that hole in my chest no
longer keeps a beat?
First published by Cider
Press Review
From Under Brushstrokes
(Press 53 2015)
Drop by Drop
My temples stream with cold
sweat like the walls of a subterranean
cave, I need air, my heart
spins, grows into a spiral, becomes
petrified into a shell sealed
around a Mayan cenote, a deep green
pool filled with the mute
echo of sacrificial virgins’ sighs: my dreams
drown within the ashes of my
memories, with dry eyes, I taste the
salt of swollen tears as they
flow away in an eternal drip, infiltrating
through the fissures of
mother of pearl: valves burst into a gigantic
wave, propelling me out of myself over foam-covered dunes.
First published by The
Bitter Oleander
From Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015)
Hedy Habra is a poet, artist and essayist. She has authored three poetry collections, most recently, The Taste of the Earth (Press 53 2019), Winner of the Silver Nautilus Book Award and Honourable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Tea in Heliopolis won the Best Book Award and Under Brushstrokes was finalist for the International Book Award. Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American Book Award’s Honourable Mention and was finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. A seventeen-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the net, and recipient of the Nazim Hikmet Award, her multilingual work appears in numerous publications. https://www.hedyhabra.com/
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