Lisa Suhair Majaj

​hunger

stripped down to essentials, collar bones protruding, handlebars of bone, shoulder bones knobbed to a frame for skin, flesh sinking around elbows, protrusion of wrists, eyes fierce with resolve: hunger is my armour. my stomach growls: I am strong enough to resist gluttony, disgust of breakfast, packed lunch I toss in the garbage. someone told me men like roundness—I don’t want men, eyes on my body, hands on my body. I want to hide: lattice of ribs, concave torso, bony frame a deterrence, my stopped period a sign of success—soon I will disappear. I don’t know yet that years later I will find you, warm skin tawny from sun, salt on your shoulders, muscled back, light in your eyes. you will open a door I did not know was closed. I won’t know then how soon you will disappear, body erased by earth, that concave settling. where were you when I was starving? where are you now when I’m starving? 
 
**

body
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brought me this far with some difficulties various broken bits. let’s not mention internal parts especially the heart which the cardiologist informs me has a flaw though grief was not what he had in mind. as bodies we are after all of very little significance our greatest sorrows some lines on a machine before they flatline. when he asked me why I was there I mentioned stress chest pain my husband’s death. he was impatient flapped his hand by his temple as if to brush away a pesky fly exclaimed irritably people move on they move on why don’t you move on. I flinched part of me noted the shocked faces of the female medical students who rushed to help me as I stood up breath stuck in my chest as I moved with difficulty to the examining table where wires and electrodes waited to pinpoint the source of my trouble. my throat clenched tight as I told him in the only voice I could muster please leave this matter I am here to examine my heart   

**

Bells

Church bells on Sunday. A dog howls in reply from deep in his aging body, a response to the metallic clamour of an unknown god. The bell sways within a controlled range of motion, its tongue clamoring, as tongues do. Don’t we all howl at the reminder of death? We discover this world too late. Count what’s left: buttons saved from childhood. Stitch them on the fabric that will be your shroud. 
 
**

Spirit Rising

My father pulled the ambulance orderly toward him with a shaking hand, begging, A cigarette, God save you, a cigarette. The orderly took a Marlboro from his pocket, put it between my father’s lips, struck a match, held it to its tip. Who was he to deny a dying man’s last wish? As my father inhaled the smoke into his cancer-riddled lungs and exhaled, I imagined his spirit slipping through partially opened lips, rising past the medical staff, the driver, neighbours gathered round, floating up toward the June sky tinged with summer dust. Years later, on the phone with my sister, the space of loss still fluid with grief, I heard her exhale, imagined smoke curling around her face, thinking how the spirit belongs to no one but itself, and how useless it is to try to hold it. My father is a wisp in the sky of memory now. When I die, may my spirit rise not like smoke but like the steam from baking bread, a whisper of longing before I disappear. 
 
**

SongBird

Sunlight after drifts of rain, a day blown down the street like a hat, petals floating across the light. I stroke my child’s skin, petal-soft: she smiles, four teeth gleaming, little serrated jags. The rope to my heart pulls across that edge, back and forth, forth and back: soon it will snag, frazzle, snap. Years my heart was locked safe and lonely in the store box of grief. Now it is freed at last, that heart swell of love, precarious songbird, wings fluttering with longing. 

**

Rain

It’s how I wanted us to leave this world: hand in hand, stripped of all inessentials, walking fearless into the rain, feet sure on the ground of travel, pressure of palm against palm, mark of sun and shadow etching our days on this earth—because no one lives or dies without leaving a trace, not even an unborn fetus, not even that 6-week not-yet-babe who slipped from my body like a whisper. We knew it would happen, there was no heartbeat, but still it took my breath away, that naked curve of translucent spine in my palm, love and grief flooding my throat like the sea.  We learned too soon how inconsequential it all is in the end, the layers we wrap ourselves in, the cocoons we think we need, when all cocoons ever do is fall away. When you died we clad you in your finest suit, placed the expensive leather shoes you’d bought just before your collapse on your feet—you weren’t planning to die, you still had so much walking to do. But at the cemetery it became clear how useless it all was, all the trappings. I understand why they left the coffin lid open, poured earth and wine onto your unrecognizable, beautiful face. No fabric could shield you, no wood protect you from that erosion. I wanted to pull you from the grave, but you were already far gone down the uncharted road. I still wake in the dark, imagine reaching my hand into blackness, taking your warm calloused hand, setting out with you, our steps firm on the earth again, leaving everything behind us but the essentials. Walking forward together into the echo of rain. 

**
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Lisa Suhair Majaj, a Palestinian-American, is author of Geographies of Light (Del Sol Press Poetry Prize), poems and essays in journals and anthologies across the US, Europe, and the Middle East, and two children's books. She is also a scholar of Arab-American literature, and co-editor of three volumes of critical essays on Arab, Arab-American, and other international women writers. Her poetry has been translated into several languages, including Arabic, and was displayed as part of the 2016 exhibition Aftermath: The Fallout of War—America and the Middle East (Harn Museum of Art). Since 2001 she has lived in Cyprus.