SMALL GEOGRAPHY
The weeds shake as if afraid, even in the sun,
grey shadows drawn in an aged hand.
Cigarettes end in neat measures of char,
as the hours of a winter sun.
My shoes crook on a mountain amidst sunflower seeds, white from wind,
my neck breaks beneath the surfeit of blue.
Minarets pin a pale city at the regular intervals of belief;
the only cathedral spires here the sharp arrows of cypress, irrational and ever-green. This, a dry land: lined river to sea by the slow and shining deltas tears track from mothers’ eyes.
LITTLE THINGS
I stepped into a dawn sore as a throat,
fingers clawed in my coat, brain curled cold in
the pockets of my mind.
The sky gaped like a wound over my crown braid.
Poppies flared on hillsides wet with winter rain, like
little Israeli rockets, like blood blooming from little kitchen-knife amputations, little daily butcheries.
The whipcord curl of a gold moon
scrawled the name of Allah on the sky, the clouds ran flagrant
the color of chiffon and sandcastles the sour flesh of lemons
boysenberry syrup tigers and honeycombs nothing was
what it was I was
screaming screaming screaming as if
the bombed-out tear-ducts of little kids in Gaza could
sob one syllable more in my blue jaw.
LAST FULL MOON BEFORE RAMADAN
Poppies in 6/4 time bloom irregular beneath a thin sky,
pinions of olive leaves and plastic bags lifting the wings of the hours,
something to catch the wind, billow like a scrapped flag,
these colors of broken fruit that people
died to paint before their own eyes.
Women wear their dowries on their fingers, in their ears, gold bangles, and in the hollow sifting shadows between the meager mountain bones of their throat, wear the borders of a nation that doesn’t exist
on a bright chain that dangles towards the beautiful ground
as they bend again, again in prayer.
Artwork Courtesy of our featured Artist Hassan Zahreddine
