Five Poems by Hedy Habra

Nocturne

       After Lichter by Maria Gust 

 

While all passengers are asleep, I stay up late, bent over my desk until,

rising from the next-door cabin, the woman’s voice begins to lull her

child to sleep, attentive to the rise and fall of her voice my pencil runs

over the page, in a sinuous way, echoing the sound of her humming

carrying the stories she will surely tell her child when he grows older

but that for now, are rocking him in the manner of an empty score

filled with inaudible words like notes traced with invisible ink only

perceived by me, who records them faithfully night after night,

stringing words and sound waves together as though weaving a

necklace in an unknown language, drowning her child’s cries and

nightly fears within reefs filled with corals and thick-lipped butterfly

fish kissing away the sadness and longing for the home they left

behind and the pains yet to come. 

 

First published by Blue Fifth Review

From Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015)

The Memory of Unspoken Words

            After Siren by Frédéric Clément 

 

She has landed on the deck of an abandoned wreck, fails to

remember how she swallowed the fiery ball that pulled her like a

tidal wave into the stillness of a metallic sky steeped in lavender

where angry clouds hover around the drowning sun suffused with

coral. Her pillow is a melted cloud filled with birds that forgot how

to fly and now swim in a pool that overflows the deck, washing the

souls of dead sailors from every leak and corner. She presses on her

eyelids to find a different ending to their story, sees her body glow

with scales and the fish in the pool grow wings. She knows every

drop of water will vanish at dawn, erasing with black ink her

luminous shape, alive only in the formless night, and the rainbow will

soon shine over a boat with discarded bags heavy with the stained

memory of unspoken words and broken planks. 

 

First published by Pirene's Fountain

From Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015)

Musical Score in Pearly Layers

            After Giant Snail by Quint Buchholz 

 

A gigantic snail sailing in the brume over misty grass stops,

smothered by the haze: or did the cello’s music refrain his slimy

progression? Head tilted, the mollusk seems only attentive to his

vibrant antennae while the man seated on a folding chair embraces

his instrument and desperate notes rise, spiraling through the coiled

corridors of the voluminous shell, oblivious of the bike left to the

care of the tall cello case standing like a Swiss guard. The cellist thinks

himself a sailor about to climb into a caravel, flaunting its aerial

antennae as a prow, while his bow strums strings in circular motion,

sound waves swell, resonate inside the convoluted chambers,

searching for the apex of the shell, where the snail’s heart beats.

Suddenly notes grow wings, leave the musical score, fly freely in

flocks around the raised translucent wands guiding their flight. 

 

First published by Connotation Press

From Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015)

Desert Song

            After The Kiss by Federico Zarco 

 

It all started when he set out in his suit and tie, searching for a sand

rose in the desert. Wandering through dream’s thresholds, he hoped

to unearth a treasure that would resist the drought of feelings, each

millenary facet telling of the innumerable ways love can be

immortalized. He must have taken a wrong turn since all he found,

erect like a menhir, was a fossil. Was it the hip of a dinosaur, or

rather a Titan’s, lost from times beyond memory, so smoothed by

the scorching sun that it bore no signs? Looking closely he saw an

open jaw with pointed teeth and a hole where an eye once stared. He

feared he had to return empty-handed in time for his date, but

realized with terror that he had no recollection of the path that led

him there. 

 

First published by Danse Macabre

From Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015)

 

Lidless Eyes

     After Who Lit This Flame in Us by Alexandra Eldridge 

 

It all happened after a furtive tear trickled down followed by a larger

one, raindrops of blue sorrow forming a puddle then a pool,

drowning me and my unborn child, or was I diving into the deepest

of my eyes, undulating in the aqueous humor, eyes wide open,

staring at my baby’s crib suspended in oceanic blue by a long,

stemmed lotus flower sprouting from its center as an umbilical

chord rising towards this iridescent parachute unfolding its pearled

petals in sympathy, and even medusas wearing their mourning coat

slide like a procession of black umbrellas, a silent omen while

anemones’ lidless eyes stare at me as one of their own. 

 

First published by Pirene's Fountain

From Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015)

Hedy Habra is a poet, artist, and essayist. Her latest poetry collection, Or Did You Ever See The Other Side?, won the International Poetry Book Awards and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer and USA Best Book Awards. The Taste of the Earth won the Silver Nautilus Book Award and Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Tea in Heliopolis won the Best Book Award, and Under Brushstrokes was a finalist for the International Book Award. Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American Book Award’s Honorable Mention and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. Her book of criticism is Mundos alternos y artísticos en Vargas Llosa. She is a twenty-five-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and a recipient of the Nazim Hikmet Award. https://www.hedyhabra.com/