Four Ekphrastic Poems by Hedy Habra

 

De lo Eterno y lo Lúdico serie sembradores de estrellas by Cristina Francov

Or Don’t Be Fooled By Her Self-Righteousness

                        After De lo eterno y lo lúdico by Cristina Francov

 

If you could only see her when she slips into her sleek pajamas

and fights for hours with me, her alter ego, always dressed in

contrasting colors from head to toe. She favors the coolness of

seashell and ivory tones while my clothes are tainted with cravings,

the shades of fire and blood. That’s why I can’t stand her political

correctness though we’ve shared the same umbilical cord and most

of the time coexist harmoniously. Or is it because I usually fade

within her during the day, a replica she carries within, folded in

her pocket like a cardboard silhouette?

 

Only at night does she allow me to materialize and sit next to her.

Hours long we ask each other the sempiternal question: Che vuoi?

Maybe she yearns to accept me, the way a terminally ill patient

needs a blood transfusion or autologous stem cells? We coexist

in constant contradiction: one of us wants to swallow the whole

world, get up at dawn and run barefoot on the beach to catch the

first rays of sun while the other would rather lie down all day long

and watch the sun set. 

 

First published by Gargoyle

From Or Did You Ever See The Other Side?(Press 53 2023)

De lo Eterno y lo Lúdico serie sembradores de estrellas by Cristina Francov

Generations Lost by Helen Zughaib

 

Or Have You Ever Noticed Erasure Patterns Within Fractals?

                        After Generations Lost by Helen Zughaib

 

Scattered on a multi-faceted quilted pond, women’s faces emerge, each as though from the center of a lotus about to drown before sunset. Eyes lined with kohl look alike. Their unanswered quest blurs the lines on the receding oval faces. In the midst of that fractal fragmentation some hands stand out holding a blank sheet of paper, or were they once photographs of loved ones, so old the image was erased by indifference as life goes by with its dismembered seasons mixed pell-mell with gouache on that canvas like in a kaleidoscope constantly reshuffling its patterns, relying upon the onlooker to revisit the artist’s gaze over the drowning faces. 

 

First published by About Place: Dignity as an Endangered Species in the 21st Century

From Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023) 

 

Generations Lost by Helen Zughaib (USA b. Beirut, Lebanon)

https://dcarts.emuseum.com/objects/3602/generations-lost;jsessionid=5CC59D832D5F773251AAF17A4EFCE659?ctx=1c1266c63cb2c344f14cbb28d23840e6dae0f2a4&idx=0

 

 

The Upright Piano

            After Piano on Fire: Mirror Maze by Andrew Ferez 

 

I see myself out in the cold, draped in a silk nightgown, seated

barefoot on a stool by that upright piano, you know, the one my

mother bought when she thought I should take piano lessons, while

others played during recess, oh, how I first struggled striking notes

daily, practicing scales, then rehearsing Mozart’s “Rondo alla Turca”

till I’d play it in my mind relentlessly, tan tan tan . . . tan tan tan . . .

even when I knew I’d never learn another piece, and now, half a

century later, I am drawing with memory’s wavering lines that same

piano to make it the vessel of my heart’s message, of so much left

unsaid buried in a bitter well turning into notes that rise in tongues of

cold fire licking my insides with every key I touch, unharmed, I feel

the piano ablaze under my fingertips, twisted candles adorn its top

that grows into a tower and turrets spouting flames from windows,

a menace to the adjacent branches, my fingers wildly strike the

keyboard while the sky opens up like a stage filled with shimmering

damask memories dancing to the melody like maddened fireflies. 

 

First published by Knot Magazine

From Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015) 

 

Piano on Fire:Mirror Maze by Andrew Ferez (Russian) 2011

 Illustration for the book "Mirror Maze" by Natalia Kalinina

https://elhurgador.blogspot.com/2012/12/andrew-ferez-ilustracion.html 

 

Bishop of Sargasso Sea by Yacek Yerka (Polish) 1996

 

On the Sargasso Sea

            After Bishop of Sargasso Sea by Yacek Yerka 

 

Think of a houseboat floating over a sea of foaming moss so thick

it seems anchored in green dunes despite its full-blown drift though

it’s only a contrivance and whoever lives in it is obsessed with the

passing of time: an alarm clock by the bed, a cuckoo at the entrance,

a sundial at the threshold, a timer by the stove, a wooden clock on

the dining table, an hourglass cresting the wall, a bell by the water

clock, and let us not forget the telescope placed between the bottle

of wine and the grapes, stalking the movement of stars.

Grains of sand fall, a rhythm espousing the ticking of clocks: chimes

and bells oscillate, muffled by surrounding haze, and there’s no room

for fantasy: its dweller watches coffee drip drop by drop, is aware

how long it takes to read each line on a page, successive seconds

pervade his sleep, even his daydreams, nothing’s left to chance, only

he knows deep inside he has become a clock within a clock, afraid

of losing track; lost in that sea of moss, he’d still feel the thump of

his own heartbeat. 

 

First published by Poet Lore

From Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015) 

 

Bishop of Sargasso Sea by Yacek Yerka (Polish) 1996

https://www.instagram.com/p/CVN7-zaoWWt/

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/

hedyhabra.com 

 

 

A Triptych Poem Consisting of 3 Ekphrastic Poems by Hedy Habra

From: "A Triptych: Visibile parlare in sotto voce: "What the Painter Hears," After The Kiss, by Gustav Klimt

 

  

  

A Triptych,  

        Visibile Parlare in Sotto Voce 

 

I. What the Painter Hears 

A Song from the Viennese, Whispered to Klimt 

 

You wanted our encounter to be a ritual,  

         planned every detail: 

             Ivy circled your hair,  

        I interlaced mine  

   with violets and jasmine.   

Wrapped in a diaphanous sarong,  

      I stood by the bed of forget-me-nots.  

            You held me  

against your silk kimono,  

             the sun's folded wings framed us  

        in its golden coin.   

Losing my balance, I fell on my knees,  

       clinging to you,  

            my arm around your bent shoulder.   

Eyes closed, I could see your hands 

             cupped around my face  

as if holding a precious porcelain.   

      I pressed my toes  

            against the ground  

   afraid we’d sink  

              into the abyss,  

both trapped within one trunk,  

             one womb,  

as if you were my own  

        and I, Mother Earth bearing fruit,  

              merging our beginnings.  

Let me become that space  

          between your palms,  

the mark of your lips on my cheek. 

 

 

 

First published by Museum Views: Art Info 

From Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015)

From: "A Triptych: Visibile parlare in sotto voce: 'The Artist as Voyeur,'"  
After The Embrace by Egon Schiele

 

 

  

 

A Triptych,  

        Visibile Parlare in Sotto Voce 

 

II. The Artist as Voyeur 

             Schiele’s Glimpse at Love 

 

 

I want them to hold each other as if it were their last embrace. 

It is unusual, I know, for anyone to witness such fiery tenderness 

but long to see desire itself as I’ve always dreamt it, 

not as I saw it in eyes saddened by layers of Kohl and mascara. 

Isn’t it what the child in us seeks,  

to be one with the primal act of one’s conception? 

 

 

I want to forget the circled eyes of children consumed  

by their own fire, their pupil, the colour of pain and loneliness . . . 

So I tell my models not to delay this embrace. They undress clumsily, 

hug each other so tightly they can’t breathe. His arms pressed 

around her waist crush her, yet she should not feel the pain, 

for what is pain if not of longing, or letting go? 

 

 

¥ 

 

 

I want her hair to cascade in deep green over the white folds 

of wrinkled sheets framing their face: let it fall on the nape of his neck, 

let him sense her sweet fragrance. I want him to wish he’d drown 

in their dark waters, in the depths of scenes rushing into his mind, 

of her of him of them of then of now all at once. 

 

 

I want to be part of his vision, wish I could paint myself in his place, 

feel images flow from her skin to mine. I turn the hour hand back, 

and over moonless waters in the darkness of a womblike warmth,  

I glimpse my own reflection in their surrender,  

the desire of myself dissolving time and space.

 

 

¥ 

 

 

Her fingers run over his shoulder, digging nails into his flesh 

as if writing on clay, a clay I have become, for I know too well how 

she remodels his chin, his lips, his cheekbone, her fingertips rest 

in the crease of his earlobe, giving me time to paint, to imagine how 

she remodels my chin, my lips, my cheekbone, her fingertips resting 

in the crease of my earlobe as I draw myself onto them. 

 

 

My back overlaps his, as my body and hers become one 

with every stroke. She forgets him, a mere screen for this séance 

to take place. He whispers through her hair, but I know 

she only hears my brushstrokes thrusting her face into her shoulder 

as if trying to silence her, forcing her to bite her own flesh. 

I know she will later read my unwritten words on the canvas. 

Does she notice how his voice is now covered by the sound of my brush?   

 

 

 

 

I paint myself as I paint them, a day at a time, my words suffused 

in linseed oil muffle even their thoughts, seep through sheets,  

beneath wavy curls, fold white curves around her body, between her legs.  

She opens up like a flower offering more surfaces to the wind.   

As I press the tip of the brush, I hear them think in Braille.   

My palette feels heavier, the session is over. They dress up  

like empty shells, leave me facing Us in a visibile parlare, 

She and I, in such an embrace, I will never recapture. 

 

 

 

First published by Museum Views: Art Info 

From Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015)

From: "A Triptych: Visibile parlare in sotto voce: "Before the Storm," 

After Bride of the Wind by Oscar Kokoschka 

  

A Triptych,  

        Visibile Parlare in Sotto Voce 

 

III.  Before the Storm 

            The Wind Trapped by Kokoshka, Rests by his Bride 

 

 

   He lies eyes wide-open, brows tense, 

lips pressed together, 

               his rugged hands  

                      knotted over his belly as if in pain.   

                   They have just made love,  

    their bodies’ tide lulled her to sleep, 

                and soon, they’d be swept away  

   in a whirlwind . . .   

             yet she sleeps unaware,  

                   lost in enchanted woods 

      while he senses the gust      miles away,  

            hears murmurs      in the thickets,  

               feels ripples formed  

   by frightened wings. 

        Head leaning on his shoulder,  

              a closed fist against his chest,  

      her dreams speak in tongues, 

         in her faint smile . . . 

                  under her lowered eyelids.   

 

                               µ 

 

     He remembers how she’d wait for him:  

          in the clearings    at her doorstep,  

                by the circular fountain  

    beneath tall beech trees.   

               He’d watch her read omens  

        in their bark’s charcoaled eyes,  

                   outline her profile . . .  

               a medallion in evening sepia,  

        see her dress     tremble  

   at the slightest breeze;  

        he’d enter the courtyard,  

            rush through dark corridors, 

                  drape himself with her smell 

             till she’d bend under his weight.  

 

 

                               µ 

 

  As though lying in tall branches,  

             they feel the rustle of leaves,  

                  the sway of sycamores, imposing pines.  

        He has to leave without looking back,  

        join forces with the North wind,  

          break the reflection captured in her eyes. 

                 Could he ever explain he was just 

                        the substance of her dreams?   

          She would wake up soon, 

                the fury of the storm deafening,  

       its call      irresistible,  

                 erasing the mirage of her shadow. 

                          He thinks of getting up but cannot move . . . 

          the painter’s gaze anchoring him by her side. 

 

 

 

First published by Museum Views: Art Info 

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 2024 International Poetry Book Award and was a Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award; The Taste of the Earth, won the Silver Nautilus Book Award and Honourable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award; Tea in Heliopolis won the Best Poetry Book Award and Under Brushstrokes was a finalist for the International Poetry Book Award. Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American Book Award’s Honourable Mention and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. Her book of criticism, Mundos alternos y artisticos en Vargas Llosa, focuses on the visual aspects of the Peruvian Nobel Laureate's narrative. 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/