If There Was a Way
to know how the ant became stuck in an ice cube, it would mean a night of occupation; tonight the moon will become sightless until the sun decides its end of demise, and the stars have already flanked like asteroids - tiny from a distant, sparkling like fire- stones. If I knew why the ant crawled into the water inside the cube, I would know why my arms feel the way they feel when in some nights they hold darkness like an earth-lotus, blooming without water. I would know that curious minds are not the only ones that renounce fear for break- through; the desire to experience pain is probably what drives stars to incarnate cyclically; is probably what made the ant want to be frozen. It isn't considered death. The mind finds a sterile axis, stops the rotation of churning, curdling to thickness until the only form that remains is gel; water is gel, in the inanimate way you enter the realm of dreams, in the steadfast manner you become home to the constricted. But, I don't crawl like the ant into self- picked spaces. I bloat like a pustule on burn, find my own water in which to entrap and cover the over-skin with glitter of relief. The night will throb the moon on its frontal lobe; the blind dawn will freeze in cataracts of light, and nobody will know how I died a thousand hours to watch the sun rise from its own. Sew He sews under the needle of numbness, electrons cheering-on magnum opus of the dead cells. There will never be dearth of spectators, this is how he will always see, bright conjunctions meant to slip him under a dreamless spell. Some minds skull out of their forms - disseminating like a torn letter - thinning paper under a solvent of nerves. He sews like a vein ready to receive; the exclusion of the external like the red dots he would swallow for sleep. It must feel like the universe has expanded on a shrinking platform, and the ebon fills in fast litres his jug of resistance. It is always day when under; he sews a thatch to roof his eyes as he dreams of hammocks that don't feel like wired enclosures under his skin, that sound of cooing waves of a lazy ocean, that taste of lobsters, glossy red like giant pills. When his jaw vibrates, he eats his teeth. He sews under fluids that are chemically stable. And then when he wakes, the white fluorescence turns blue. His mind tells him he's an active dart ready to shoot for target, his body sewing his burning, fading memories of his sleep. ( Sheikha A. is from Pakistan and United Arab Emirates. Her work appears in a variety of literary venues, more about which can be found at sheikha82.wordpress.com)
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One More Night
What I always wanted is a space to my spirit with tears and cure myself from the grief and believing that tomorrow will be a good day One more night staying up late I was not born to enjoy this world with the diamonds of her parents she mercilessly cuts my chest open As the blood starts dripping all over my flesh and I am walking away from the dark road to rest and sleep in a dirty sidewalk and having nightmares If I ever survive with a broken heart I would break the bird wings to fly leaving no scent of my flesh nor do I want to wash in a salty sea to die sweet Only God Knows Only god knows how much I need you. I miss you as much as the snow misses a moment to fall above the cedars. Everyone says that I should keep moving on, but I hear your voice coming toward me slowly as if I hear an echo from a distance. Weeping, because of my daily routine, the autumn season appears twice in one year. first was from the cloud, second is from my eyes bitter is how happiness tastes I smile in my dreams, waiting to see you before the train comes and leaves me in grief ( Ahmad Al-Khatat. He was born in Baghdad on May 8th. From Iraq, he came to Canada at the age of 10, the same age when he wrote his first poem back in the year 2000. He also has been published in several press publications and anthologies all over the world. His poems were translated into Farsi, Albanian, German, and Chinese. And he currently studies Political Sciences, at Concordia University in Montreal. He recently have published his two chapbooks “The Bleeding Heart Poet” and “Love On The War’s Frontline”. With Alien Buddha Press. It is available for sale on Amazon. Most of his new and old poems are also available on his official page Bleeding Heart Poet on Facebook.) Third Generation
There are some silences which annihilate the landscape. I was brought up with them, learnt the topography of them across the kitchen table. Fatherless girls fall in love with the ghosts of their fathers. How many times have I had to remind myself of this? But I’ve learned not to look back in anger and not to confuse servitude with solitude or vice versa. You know how it is, that feeling of standing still in space, with every double entendre, every double-bladed sword sinking into the back of someone’s neck while you watch, completely stunned? The fire consumes a histrionic, blisters them with jealousy, turns ordinary women into furies. I watched my grandmother pour gin and vermouth down her throat, as if that could somehow drown the flames, but she passed out by 7 pm every night. Momma would go upstairs to get stoned. I’d play with my Barbies in the closet, left numb, wondering why everything can’t be straight forward. And if some things just weren’t nice, you should never speak of them again. But it is almost winter, and I am myself ever, and God is nowhere to be found. I watched my grandmother recede in dementia and my mother beaten into an invalid by a stroke. She used to call me a changeling, a wicked child. I came into her life during a storm. I brewed secret poisons in holes I dug, filled with rainwater and little toads I caught behind the house. Can I write myself into being? Give me some matchsticks and a cold and desolate patch of rock. Give me some dead branches under the twisting ribbon of night. I’d fly through it; I’d fly straight home. ( Robin DeFrance is a writer and activist who worked many years as a caregiver. Currently, she resides in Kane, PA with her partner and cats. She finds poetry to be the best mouthpiece for communicating traumatic experiences such as isolation, abuse, sorrow, love, or remorse.) |
The Beautiful Space-
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