Reema

“Muslim Girlhood

I never found myself in a pink aisle.
There was no box for me
with glossy cellophane like heat
and a neat packet of instructions in six languages.

Evenings, I watched TV like a religion I moderately believed.
I watched to see how the others lived, not knowing I was the other - no laugh track in my living room, no tidy and punctual resolution waiting.

I took tests in which Jane & William had so many apples.

I fasted through birthday parties
and Christmas parties
and ate leftover tajine at plastic lunch tables,
picked at pepperoni from slices like blemishes and tried not to complain.

I prayed at the wrong times in the wrong tongue.
I hungered for Jell-O & Starburts & margarine;
could read mono- and diglycerides by five,
knew what gelatin meant, and
where it came from.”
― Leila Chatti

“تلعثم"

تحاول الكلام ..
مثل طفل لم يعرف نارًا أكبر من عود ثقاب.
وعليه الآن ..
أن يصف غابة كاملة تحترق”
― ميثم راضي, كلمات رديئة

“Loving the Hands

I could make a wardrobe
with tufts of wool
caught on thistle and bracken.

Lost - the scraps
I might have woven whole cloth.

"Come watch," the man says,
shearing sheep
with the precision of long practice,
fleece, removed all of a piece,
rolled in a neat bundle.

I've been so clumsy
with people people who've loved me.

Straddling a ewe,
the man props its head on his foot,
leans down with clippers,
each pass across the coat a caress.

His dogs, lying nearby,
tremble at every move - as I do,
loving the hands that have learned
to gentle the life beneath them.”
― Julie Suk, Lie Down with Me: New and Selected Poems

“You are so serious, as if
a glacier spoke in your ear
or you had to walk through
the great gate of Kiev
to get to the living room.”
― Frank O'Hara