For The Record
you have grown too big. too full of images like water in fist, like sand between fingers, unreliable as ink on page. for the record, there will only ever again be vague flashes, just the cucumber slipping out the end of your sandwich pieces of gravel in your knees trampoline-burn the s
Daffodils
My mother chose clothes toned in pastel and soft wool sheared of pink and brown. Something wrong with her shalwar kameez- she could tell her identity wasn’t for the 9-5, so she hid it in a button-down. Professional, kempt, clean. Adapting to an alien rhythm- monotony isn’t so hard.
The Amman I know
the Amman I know, wakes up early in the summer stretching out her feet as the adhan sounds. streets remain silent bas the scraping of sweepers and the corner bakery rolling up its shutters. slowly, the city awakens with the honks of taxis and squeaky carts of ka’ak bread, she stirs as the national
As you lay dying, in a language I barely knew
As you lay dying, you coughed up worm-strings of words in a language I barely knew. Smooth platefuls of sound, slipping like the silver-butter of moonlight on a pond. Ephemeral. If I cannot conjugate (I cannot) – I die, you die, she would die, too, – how can I feel the rough edges of [&he
Weaverbirds
We used to climb the thorn trees when we were boys And annoy the weavers building their summer nests. I always kept my shoes on. You were older, Your footholds surer, scrambling up on palms and soles Dusted gold with pollen. You found where the birds Were at work. They were spinning dry grass into [
embroidery
sitting cross-legged on the veranda couch, I try to mirror the patience of your voice when threading the needle for the fifth time, wanting to sew your speech into linen and have it rest in my dress pocket. naively, I swaddle myself in the temporary, slipped like a bookmark betwee
The Jam Jar Forest
we went looking for the Jam Jar Forest, with memories in jars – shutting the lids tightly, so they wouldn’t leak on the way. we searched the night horizon for silver branches craning upwards in a moonlight photosynthesis. i said, listen, for the singing of a finger on a wine glass rim. follow it
boju says
he is now the 2am ambak falling on our tin roof & maybe but i don’t have words for this widow singing for the ghost of her husband still limping around his home of pepper trees […]