A scent, remembered from morning deepens missing, yet the knowing grows green, healthy tendrils like the Golden Pothos sitting in the window, enjoying warming sunlight.
In the Afternoon
Category: poetry
In Light of You
Here, beneath the trees, we sit in the peace of a sunlit afternoon. My words, my pale pathetic words, fade in the light of you. As the words I grasp at as possibilities to say all I mean evaporate from my hands and mind like the water in this drying arroyo shrinks away from its banks before us, I am left wordless. For no words can stand in the light of you and the gifts you bring to places where I discovered pieces missing in light of you.
Blood Reign
All photos courtesy of Ap and Twitter
I’ve revised and reworked an earlier piece written in 2017 as a response to the terrorism of Hamas and the war Israel has declared. It seems to me that this slaughter by Hamas and the retaliation that Israel is now forced to take cannot be what any God wants. Surely, it is not what the Palestinian people or the people of Israel want either.
The blood of children falls as rain on Holy ground. The blood of their parents chasing after as if to save it, stopping it from concreating the land to evil born of old hatred as the world, emptied of all care, watches. No uprisings. No shouting in the streets as this blood rain of innocents falls, flooding the silent world as nations watch, hands bloodied in pretense of helplessness before turning their backs. The seven descend. Each with wings spread enough to fill a house. Shalom upon their tongues. Throughout the compass points they search to find all the gnawed bones, the muscles and sinew, the heart and entrails torn with teeth of hate. And once the seven gather all the tiny bits, With flaming swords used as needles, they try to stitch all humanity’s bloody bits into one thing well knit. Neither their swords, nor spirit of their breath have the power to seal the meat and sinew to bone. And then they know-- those who showed no mercy would be given none. Their heads hang-- Inshallah upon their lips as they ascend. Their flaming eyes weeping tears of fire as they see the red rider striding across the land. It is then the seven know humanity’s avarice and hate had broken the fourth seal. Maa shaa’Allah a whisper of smoke within their throats. From the seven sets of fiery eyes, their tears of fire stream Retzon ha-el across the night sky.
Birds Fall Silent
I tear the trailing ivy
From the trunk of the crepe myrtle tree,
A routine autumnal yard task,
Look up to a partly cloudy Texas sky,
Think of madmen and bombs,
A madman and eleven shot dead
As they prayed on Shabbat—
No words, no words come
Even the birds fall silent.
If I Could Sing
I would sing melodies
of healing to fade the scars of yesterday’s pain.
I would sing tales
of velvet nights to cushion any regrets.
I would sing the notes
of the forests and mountains for the joys of today.
I would sing songs
of promises made and kept in the morrows to come.
I would sing hymns
of praise and gratitude for you.
In Honor of Narges Mohammadi, Jailed Iranian activist and 2023 Nobel Peace Prize winner
Hair Part I & II
Women, we are tortured by our hair.
It is never what we want.
It never obeys our desires.
A mischievous heathen,
it laughs at our attempts
to bend it to our will.
We grow it, cut it, dye it,
curl it, straighten it,
treat it with carcinogenic chemicals
to beat the mischief making
blasphemer into submission.
All the while, it laughs at us
as our enemies, humidity and wind,
destroy in seconds
the cooperation
we thought we’d earned
with our torturous machinations.
Hair:
Too thin,
Too thick,
Too curly,
Too unruly,
Too straight,
Too limp,
Too frizzy,
And the color—
Too…too…too…too-too little
and too-too much of everything—
Never exactly as it should be.
It will not follow our will.
Pull it into a ponytail.
Shove it under a baseball cap or a sun hat.
Why don’t we just shave our heads
And let it be done?
This woman’s crowning glory,
a temptation enough to make angels fall
from the heights of heaven at the sight it,
necessitates head coverings and wigs for women,
according to some.
After all, who wants it to rain angels
into the streets of the world?
That’s a sight I wouldn’t mind seeing
since I’ve got questions for those angels.
For one, why do women have to help angels
control such lusty impulses?
But I digress as I begin my morning battle
with my own head of hair.
II
I grasp this beast of kinky
curls that sits upon my head,
attempting to tame it into submission.
First, the wire brush stretching strands
straight as concentrated hot air
dry the water from the beast.
Slowly the taming comes.
Finally dry, frizz left there,
making me aware who the boss really is.
I break out my next weapon
against this frizzy beast:
The flat iron.
And while it heats,
I tune the speakers to a podcast
about the missing women of Juarez.
Sectioning my beast hair as I listen
about women missing,
women found dead,
women to whom no one paid attention
because
they were
women, girls
because
they were
brown
because
they were
poor
women, girls
brown
poor—
The things
that do not grab attention
that fade away in the media
easy to say of these—
They ran away.
With a boyfriend, likely.
Oh, she’s a drug addict.
Who knows where she went?
And on I go to straighten another section
Of hair with my hot flat iron.
My beast neatly tamed.
I think it would be easier to braid my hair into rows.
Decorating the braids with small beads,
a bead for each missing woman,
a bead for each murdered woman,
a bead for each missing, murdered, indigenous woman of color
in this land, across the globe.
Each tiny bead
with a name microscopically etched
and then braided into my hair
as beads of grief,
a bead for each woman, each girl—
If I could then even lift
my bead heavy head
like the mothers who carry
sandbags of grief searching
the world for daughters
gone missing—
what could I, one person, do?
The world spins on.
Despite the burden of beads,
these beads braided
into the fabric of motherhood
across the globe
for girls gone missing,
girls glanced at, ignored
by a society that sends up invisible prayers
then turns forgetting what it deems valueless,
girls marked by the violence of poverty,
Then I think of 22 year old, Mahsa Amini.
dead in the twisted irony
of morality police custody for a hijab violation.
I should shave my head in solidarity
with the women of Iran
who protest.
But what could I, one person, do?
Would beads or a shaved head here make a difference?
Would anyone know the meaning?
My neck cannot bear the weight of braids with beads enough for each woman.
My bald head would not be understood as sign of solidarity.
So I send out my chicken scratches of a poem
into the world, and I choose to leave it as it is,
Untamed and ugly.
If the Eternal Exists
no gulf across time no forever in forever promises of time that drips still as if the eternal existed in the binding of souls and yet-- and yet— breath stops in hope-- with my final breath I will soar into the sun to wait for you, or should it be-- find you there waiting for me, then we will fly beyond whatever magic of spirit there exists, mingling and joining with the elements-- of air of earth of water of fire merging and separating and merging again for an eternity. then should we, in the beauty of condemned blessings, fall to earth once again, no matter where, no matter when, I will find you yet again.
The Birth of Autumn
At the edges of this cool morning, humming with the dying of summer, I, long awake, attend to things that must be done: dogs fed; trash pulled to the curb; a load of laundry started; hummingbird feeders cleaned; all ordinary, mundane things— This chill in the air has me wish I’d put on a jacket, yet the chill will be gone by noon. And I find I smile. For the first time, I do not despair at the dying of this year’s summer, but find a joyous warmth in the light as this year’s autumn is born.
Of Stones and Weeds
I could rake these stones. Free these tiny weeds which my feeble fingers fumble to grab and tweeze out. Yes, with a rake, I could disturb the harmony of stones, free the weeds— But no. I have had enough of stones. I’ve enough of their weight placed upon me. I’ve carried the tonnage of stone from place to place, lived under it, barely breathing through years, lived decades encased within a sarcophagus of other’s demands and expectations, all shattered now in lovely shards left in the distance behind me. No, I will leave these stones undisturbed. They will not take up my time. There are other ways to weed, and should the weeds take the stones, there is beauty to be found in the wildness of weeds.
For All Our Daughters, A Prayer
My daughter, mine,
though you live
thousands of miles away
sleep safe, my daughter mine.
Though you live
where a man caresses a weapon of war as he plots
to drill death into hundreds as he walks down a street,
sleep safe, my daughter mine.
Though you live
where freedom should ring
yet a state ties you hostage in righteous ropes of religion,
sleep safe, my daughter mine.
Though you live
where you must sell your body
to feed your children,
sleep safe, my daughter mine.
Though you live
where no one, no law will protect you
from the monster who sleeps beside you,
sleep safe, my daughter mine.
Though you live
where you have no voice,
where you die in the custody of morality police,
where you can disappear with no outcry to echo behind,
sleep, sleep safe, my daughter mine.
Hearing The Mermaids Sing 