Dust art
I slit the dust of the car's rear window
and make a tilted tree, staring at the skies.
I calm time before it begins to judge me.
The winds move above but make no sound,
the leaves surrender to its silent force.
No blooms—it is unqualified to demand
spectators who thirst for beauty
in temporal things. I know like me
it wishes for something simple
like days that spark within a month of ash
We echo each other like the streets and miles.
Perhaps this art is my translation in a language
I knew then forgot, a song sung in a heated dream
but before I can catch this small miracle
the clouds gather and growl as
thin threads of thunder split the light of day
and rain trails down the glass
washing the tree back into the dust,
of an unnamed street.
Something in me thickens —
the grief of watching my quiet refuge dissolve.
It makes me think of God
how he seems to appear in the cosmos
allotropic and unimpressive.
Fallen Vowels
Some days, I feel something was added to my life
without knowing its shapes. What I understand:
I am starved of what I already possess like white
for colors. Like a musk deer for musk.
I wander inside the cruelty of my unknowings
and desire to be beautified. Like a hapless stone yearning for
inscription
I was told a subtraction that follows an addition
is the reflection of longings
which on bisecting sums to zero.
Even the clouds come barefoot to witness
padding the moment with their dampness
The frayed architecture of my mundaneness
moves with the asymmetry of the clock. So much of this
world breathes inside me. I too walk forward and
act victorious in life’s empty silence.
My walls are high but crumble like the wealth of a
moldering civilization. It crushes my bones to their core.
What do I hold back? My hands hold
back my body in sleep or the presence of a sunset
for fear that setting me free might melt me
to oblivion.
Still I live—
in the presence of what was added to me
and in its haunting absence, unashamed of grammar
of the message hidden
in improper punctuation, fallen vowels
Names
In childhood when our uncle inquired
what we knew of our dead ancestors’ names,
and for our innocent ignorance sent
us to Granny for answers
like fish dangling from fish-hooks
the names inside our brains made us
stand taller for a moment
like a pen-cap stuck on the opposite end.
I don't remember when it was—
but the names when stoked with love
made us return to faces that melted away
in the air
and what remained on our bodies was
a voiceless ripple.
just another portrait for memory
inside memory, the fractal shapes
we were part of, with those beyond touch
how quick to visit this meadow filled
with stone-cast songs of time;
when stripped thin, they thrum the echoes,
they stipple like light blooming on a path
drenched by autumnness.
Artwork Courtesy of our featured Artist Hassan Zahreddine
