Hedy Habra
Having Dinner at the Mosaica Restaurant in Prague Mark Rothko's Subway Series projects the onlooker onto each canvas alongside elongated silhouettes of men and women oblivious of their surroundings as though immersed in their inner world. As I entered these existential scenes as one of the isolated travelers, I was transported back to my descent into Prague's metro. Aware that I wouldn't be able to pronounce any word in Czech, I held on tight to a piece of paper with the name of the station. I kept trying to say these words aloud just in case I'd lose it but every time I'd stop passers-by to check my pronunciation, they would laugh and make me repeat the address. The long descent in the metro's steep escalator conjured up my worst nightmares. I kept checking the other side of the escalator to make sure I could find my way up as I felt immersed in a movie in which people were condemned to the underworld. I learned later that Prague's fast-moving escalators led to tunnels used for protection against nuclear weapons. I wasn't comforted to face the rush of people getting out of the compartment's doors lost in thought as in Rothko's paintings and tried to ask someone if this metro was headed to the address on my paper. I arrived in time to meet my poet friends at the Mosaica relieved that we would all return to the hotel together. ** This poem was first published by The Cortland Review. ** How I'd Love To Decipher Even the Traces of Every Leaf's Language Fallen leaves gather all the way to my doorsteps and all over the deck, some beckoning for a touch. The slightest breeze uncovers new colours. I step over them, they're still warm inside, won't break under pressure, yet sing a song of longing to the abandoned branches once heavy with birds' nests filled with fluttering fledglings; their silent song, a score of a thousand shades, spotted or tainted as though dipped into a watercolour wash, the way paint bleeds over silk paper. They seem to hang onto ephemeral moments when some retain blood in their capillaries while others offer a paler, livid look before drying out into a symphony of ochres. I walk through carpeted paths, gather a few oak and maple leaves, pile them together according to their hues, burgundy, salmon, lemon, beige, then open them up, arranging them fanlike to watch the gradation of colours. Every fall season, I marvel at how invasive vines turn dead trunks into artworks, strangling them with deep purple or ruby red garnet wine ruffled foliage. Their lianas thickening year after year, drunken with power. The loss of leaves says something about the tree, how there is beauty in aging, a beauty that has to give way to aches and stiffness in the joints. Each leaf remembers the scar left in its place of birth and sings of loss in a vibrato of shades. ** This poem was first published at Life and Legends. ** Defying the Blank Page They seem sketched at dawn with sepia colours: a herd of deer followed by a trembling fawn appears in the whitened landscape. Disoriented, they roam around unable to distinguish what was once inert or throbbing under the thick layers of immaculate snow. Head bent, they fumble, in search of a blade of grass, a twig or a dried leaf to munch on. They know they must keep digging deeper and deeper, farther and farther, until they stumble upon a forgotten nut or an acorn, the remainder of a bush, softened fallen bark still covered with moss, any meager sustenance to help resist the bitter cold. Are they even aware they instill hope in my daily struggle? They gather at noon warm a bed of fallen leaves under the spruces ** This was first published by Live Encounters Magazine, and in the author's collection, The Taste of the Earth (Press 53.) ** What's in the Flame of a Candle? Close your eyes and stare inward, conjuring the voice of your first yoga teacher. Was it her soothing Danish accent that instilled peace in you? Or perhaps her reassurance that only outlining movements mattered, the way brushstrokes lead you without expectations? With eyes closed, draw a candle out of the darkness, see its flame get brighter with the rising sun, see it redden the background against the dark horizon delineated as in a Rothko painting, and watch the setting sun shed blood over ocean waves. Keep staring at the flame's harmless cool light wavering, stretching. Watch it as you'd watch the flicker of coals under caressing tongues of flames dancing inside the hearth, the way you did that night when alone with your cat, you survived the power outage in the midst of one of Michigan’s worse ice storms. Let the eyes of your body recall the mountain bonfires lit in honor of the Virgin Mary's Assumption, the tall votive candles, remember the Bunsen burner's blue flame that sterilized your grandmother’s needles and syringe. ** This poem was first published by Third Wednesday Magazine. ** The Abandoned Stone House in Damascus Don’t ask me what side I am with! Don’t ask me about the outcome! They say rain won’t wash the indelible blood splattered in the streets, the moans and cries of children resonate in my aching ears, filling each crack and corner of my heart. Will anyone open doors and windows wide, let the wind in to erase the bitter clouds of gunpowder? Faces smeared with dust and sweat all look alike, come and go as they please, their footsteps resonate in my temples as over worn out, stretched out drums. My walls yearn for the daily smell of freshly cut herbs, for the warmth of the hearth, the familiar sight of the iron pot hanging over glowing coals. Once, the simmering stew was singing with spices and children played under the shade of the olive tree. I can still hear their mother’s humming while separating lentils from stone. ** This poem was first published by Mizna Literary Journal, and in the author's collection, The Taste of the Earth (Press 53.) ** Amber Daum An opalescent Daum vase placed on a pedestal stand in a lighted corner, its wider base covered with overlapping silver vine leaves from which it rose like a tree trunk, translucent as a vertical flame under sunlight. Carved into crystal, a silvery leafed elm trapped like an insect or a mote of dust inside amber resin, a tree within a tree-shaped vase. One could almost feel the wind blowing through its dark veined branches, sense the rustle of leaves that would never fall, flying like petals as in Corot’s landscapes, the same landscapes she loved to reproduce, bent hours long over an easel till she’d enter the scene. Her brush would rearrange dot by dot the red scarf of the woman resting under the arching elm in Mortefontaine, highlight with one stroke the cap of the boatman anchoring his skiff alongside the riverbank. ** This poem was first published by MuseumViews: a Playhouse of the Muses, and in the author's collection, Tea in Heliopolis (Press 53.) ** The Apple of Granada Some say Eve handed a pomegranate to Adam, and it makes sense to me. How can the flesh of an apple compare to the bejeweled juicy garnets, the colour of passion, hidden under its elastic pink skin tight as an undersized glove, a fruit withholding the power to doom and exile since the dawn of time. For a few irresistible seeds, didn’t Persephone lose sight of the sun for months? I mean, think of the mystery hidden in its slippery gems, of the sweetness of the tongue sealing the union with the beloved in the Song of Songs. And I succumb, despite how messy it is to crack the fruits open, invade that hive, oblivious to the indelible droplets splattering the sink, reaching beyond the marble counter all over my arms and face, as my fingertips delicately remove its inner membranes, until the bowl is filled with shiny ruby red arils. I add a few drops of rose and orange blossom water, the way my mother did, and my grandmother used to do, and her mother before her. ** This poem was first published at Cumberland Poetry Review, and in the author's collection, Under Brushstrokes (Press 53.) ** Hedy Habra has authored four poetry collections, most recently, Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023); The Taste of the Earth won the Silver Nautilus Book Award and Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award; Tea in Heliopolis won the USA Best Book Award and Under Brushstrokes was a finalist for the International Book Award. Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American Book Award’s Honorable Mention. A twenty one-time-nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and recipient of the Nazim Hikmet Award, her multilingual work appears in numerous journals and anthologies. www.hedyhabra.com |
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