Once
Upon the Time, in Prague, a Word
I woke him up with warm colours steeped in dawn
wove woollen rugs to carry us across the
skies,
sought the knotted comfort of ancestral
vines,
a ruggedness filled with countless rays of
sun,
heard they gave out year after year their
sweetest
grapes ...
If you’d just wait for them to ripen...
Instead I
stumbled on its scaly, snakelike bark,
his eyes avoided mine
his hand grew cold
he forgot to smile...
I refused to see how tightly the vine
twisted upon itself
a wise man once conjured up a Golem, built out of dust
by merely writing on his forehead the word trust
when only one letter sufficed to turn him back to dust
From dust to dust says the priest, placing
a dab
of fresh ashes on our forehead, his black
fingertips
dipped in a shallow chalice move from skin
to skin.
Every Ash Wednesday we bow and kneel, try to
keep
the cinders’ mark all day long, lest we
forget
dust is our beginning and our end.
but the Golem grew stronger, forgot he emerged from
dust
find the right word,
whispered street corners in mistrust
let your fingertips mark his forehead, turn him back
to dust
We fill empty words with transparent
threads
milked from the full moon, woven by the
flow
of ink sliding on the page, filling its
veins with forests
branching rivers deep into flesh, blood
dripping
from every unseen pore.
Some yearn for the right word in gestation
to bring new life from the substance of
dreams...
What was a pound of flesh really worth?
Do we ever weigh the impact of an awakened
world?
I once built my own Golem to warm me up at night
hoped to see reflected in
his piercing eyes
gems full of broken rainbows till I saw a steel look
arise
I still search for the missing signs to
reshape
tattooed ashes on my forehead, defying
memory,
the memory of a raindrop catching the sun’s warmth
inside my heart, warm droplets evaporated into dreams.
I kneel, like a tracker walking backwards
to erase one’s footsteps with a branch
soft as a feather, levelling the disturbed
sand.
First published by The New York Quarterly
Untold Tale(s) of Unfinished Tapestry
No one ever speaks of your baggy eyes, your
failing eyesight
when shutters closed, you worked by
candlelight,
restless fingers revisiting coloured
threads,
erasing your own traces, shoulders bent,
sleepless nights spent undoing the daily
voyage,
freezing time to fool avid suitors,
harbingers of death.
Every stitch undone brought him closer to her arms
unaware of her doing and undoing,
He came covered with coarse salt, body
aching for fresh water,
eager to find solace by your side in the
forsaken bed,
a difficult journey back to his lost self,
unaware of time’s erasure,
of the silver in his beard and hair, of
your callous fingers.
She brought him closer to her arms, a stitch at a time
no one noticed her doing
and undoing.
I had a friend who spent her nights mending
herself,
weaving back what was undone with
medication,
reconstructing the daily offence of
radiation,
imagining strategies to stop the passing of
time.
Rainbow-colored tablets cleared inner
spaces,
eyes and shutters closed, she worked
inward.
Only he noticed your doing and undoing
every stolen minute brought you
closer to his arms
I see her move in darkness around the flame
of a candle.
She visualizes the fabric of her cells,
weaving fiery patterns,
watches the yellow flame stretch into blue
thread and needle,
breathing hope into her lungs, telling
herself, I will prevail.
You will prevail, you tell yourself, doing and
undoing,
every stitch will bring him
closer to your arms
Your mind instilled light into darkened
areas, stitching together
broken pieces, rainbow-colored threads
filling spaces with finer
and finer needles, bringing inside crevices
the filtered light
of the candle, doing and undoing, until the
loom no longer resisted.
First published by Puerto del Sol
Hedy Habra is a poet,
artist and essayist. She is the author of three poetry collections from Press
53, most recently, The Taste of the Earth (2019), Winner
of the Silver Nautilus Book Award and Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer
Book Award; Tea in Heliopolis Winner of the Best Book Award and Under Brushstrokes,
which was a Finalist for the Best Book Award and the International Book Award.
Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American Book Award’s
Honorable Mention and was Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. A twenty one-time
nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the net, and recipient of the Nazim
Hikmet Award, her multilingual work appears in numerous journals and anthologies.
https://www.hedyhabra.com/
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