Hedy Habra

Drop by Drop
 
My temples stream with cold sweat like the walls of a subterranean cave, I need air, my heart spins, grows into a spiral, becomes petrified into a shell sealed around a Mayan cenote, a deep green pool filled with the mute echo of sacrificial virgins’ sighs: my dreams drown within the ashes of my memories, with dry eyes, I taste the salt of swollen tears as they flow away in an eternal drip, infiltrating through the fissures of mother of pearl: valves burst into a gigantic wave, propelling me out of myself over foam-covered dunes.
 
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First published by The Bitter Oleander
From Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015)
 
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Unborn
 
I have no eyes, no ears, no lips, a flower drawn from the wild seed of their eyes, elytra’s spark in the darkening riverbed, a trembling protean flame rising from an elusive space where skin meets skin. Hand in hand, they watch me grow tongues of flame licking the warm air, extending like fingers in a glove, intertwined vines blossoming in fiery petals. They hear the rustling of dry leaves nearby, a droplet bursting on a tin gutter, a crack in the icy roof, a tear of melting snow, read the sudden silence of wind chimes, hear me whisper: yes, I am, I know . . .
 
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First published by GraFemas: Letras Femeninas
From Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015)
 
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Visiting the Generalife
 
I linger along the rose orchard cooled by water fountains. A suspension of iridescent droplets rises and falls in splashing loops, trickles through inlaid channels. Here, air speaks with caressing syllables and fragrant language; each lemon tree heavy with golden globes, its crisp shiny leaf ready to break under my fingers’ slightest touch, oozes essential oils. Each rose speaks of the harvest of rose petals and orange blossoms my mother distilled in alembics in the vast white-tiled bathroom, the transparent essence imprisoned in a row of bottles stored in the sandara, that secret room above the kitchen, hosting a microcosm of flavours gathered from faraway plantations and mountain slopes.
 
Boabdil’s heart shrunk
eyes fixed at the Alhambra
a fragile star falls
 
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First published by Dashboard Horus
From The Taste of the Earth (Press 53 2019)
 
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Jacaranda
 
      Voy a construir una ventana en medio
            de la calle para no sentirme solo.
                                    —Miguel Ángel Zapata
 
 
The poet would like to build a window in the middle of the street so that he won’t feel lonely. I also want to build a window in the middle of the street, plant a jacaranda and then wake up at the trills of the songbirds nested in its branches. I will drink my morning coffee seated on the ground carpeted with the purple petals of my youth and every night feel its foliage tremble under the faraway breeze that blows in Beirut along the Corniche, bringing a mist of fragrant echoes through half-open shutters. Night is woven with the flutter of wings.
 
Windblown words travel
through thought’s countless corridors
turn daydreams ablaze
 
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First published by ArLiJo 54: Arlington Literary Journal
From The Taste of the Earth (Press 53 2019)
 
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The Burma Pearl
 
In my chest there is a dot that is a hole where I could hear my heartbeat as I stepped into the Burma store while you picked a pearl pendant just for me. That morning, dew was barely brushing the petals of the budding spring. I handed you my gold medal carved with the crowned Virgin and child, my grandmother’s gift at my baptism. I still have the oval-shaped pearl in my jewelry box; it has escaped looting, known so many homes in different latitudes and languages. It has never touched my skin since but remains filled with words said and unsaid, suffused within the music of a light that once ran over my cheeks.
 
Cicadas sing songs
hum a threnody for life
empty shells over bark
 
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First published by Sukoon Literary Journal
From The Taste of the Earth (Press 53 2019)
 
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Or How I Still Turn My Turkish Coffee Cup Upside Down
 
When I was single, mom, you used to bend over the dregs’ configurations, conjuring up budding shapes, intricate encounters rising along the porcelain walls. You’d ask me to press my thumb inside the murky bottom to petrify an incipient evil eye. After I got married, how you laughed at me: you already know your luck! We could foresee trips, reunions, question the cornucopia of inked silhouettes, hollowed tree trunks, animals whispering messages or bearing pearls in their mouths. After you were gone, twenty years ago, I have been reading my own luck every day, projecting my hopes and calming my fears. During the past ninety days at home I’ve maintained the ritual, defying all odds. What am I hoping to find in the cup? I know I won’t be able to travel to California to hold my son’s first baby boy in my arms.
 
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First published by Cuthroat: A Journal of The Arts
From Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023)
 
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Or Why Do I Fast-Forward Lovers’ Encounters On TV Shows?
 
What are elusive lovers if not erratic paths, mediocrity encountered at every major crossing when we get lost as we try to hold on tight to the wheel of fortune, lest it bends on the other side, tree stumps on which to stop and rest for a while, hoping they’ll grow into a maple, or an oak, become strong enough so that we could stretch a hammock between their branches, rest while reading, swayed by the wind humming Aeolian tunes, maybe find a shoulder to help cross a stream of discontent or uncertainty, a staff, a shaft, a wooden crutch once meant to grow twigs bearing buds but instead dries up and breaks under our weight as an illusory axis mundi? What of the inanity of such quest, of attempting to create with a deck of cards a story, our story, the way some weave fleeting tales with Tarots, aligning them in vertical or horizontal lines, inventing new signs and symbols
 
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First published by Fifth Wednesday Journal
From Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023)
 
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Waiting in a Field of Melted Honey
 
I am waiting in a field of melted honey, hiding behind a blue tree that is not really a tree, a root Vincent chose to paint as a tree, you know, the painting where roots are the size of trees, gnarled trees with severed limbs, sterile against the golden field swaying, the tall grass bending, and of course no one can tell, but l feel the wind too, swelling my blue-flowered dress, you won’t see none of it, for I am behind the huge roots that look like trees and you can only feel the wind in the brush strokes. You will mistake my dress bulging on the side for a knot as if I were a distortion of the oversized joints, leaning against the bark as if against one of his fingers, my space so
restricted I can barely move.
 
The master knows I am waiting for him, eyes filled with the beauty pouring from his vision. I know he will take these roots and me with them, trees growing into rising clouds at nightfall, and he will show me the city lights everything around us becoming waves of light. When he remembers me, the tip of his brush releasing me, I will tell him how hot it was behind the root that was like a tree, how the bright rays made me dizzy. He will take me into his brush, cool me down with linseed oil and in another field show me the evening sky. I come to life again, but no one knows I’m here, the gold of my hair, the blue of my dress broken into lines, narrow paths of colour spiralling among the stars on a warm blue night, the moon and the sun becoming one and I and him, the field and the sky circling endlessly. I feel the ripples of the wind, the ocean’s foam, my dress flows domelike, its flowers brighter and brighter, I am everywhere, hear our voices and you now understand what lies in each swirl, your life, mine, his, together in the dance of the stars.
 
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First published by Puerto del Sol
From Tea in Heliopolis (Press 53 2013)
 
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Last Night I Saw Mom at a Party 
 
She wore a brightly-coloured dress but her head was covered by a pharaonic double veil; the first in silk gauze was visible over her temples underneath the black velvet. I kept watching her from afar and couldn't understand this headdress a la Tutankhamun! Unlike her mom who never left the house without a hat and gloves, she seldom used her black lace veil during mass. When I approached her, she disappeared towards the restrooms and came out in a black spindle dress, her hair pulled back in a low bun a la Farah Diba. Stunned, I wanted to ask her, where did you find such beautiful clothes? I'd like to go shopping with you! But people kept cutting in before I could utter a word and with her usual stern expression, she joined other guests at the dinner table. I opted for resting in the living room that was suddenly surrounded with babies and several ladies flocked around them with doting expressions. Before I could get up from the sofa, a plump baby landed on my lap! I didn't know what to do with him. I put him in a nearby stroller and placed a soft beanie cushion under his head oblivious of what was going on around me,  all the while thinking of mom's stunning transformation and kept wondering why I could never find anything decent to wear. 
 
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First published  by On the Seawall
 
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Finding My Way to My Old House
 
I'm wandering aimlessly through Cairo's downtown avenues. I end up finding my way to the tramway station leading to Heliopolis. It's night when we reach the arcades bathed in streetlights where we used to shop and stroll with friends. Past Midan Ismailia, the next stop is Midan Saphir, my final destination. Only a few blocks away, on 12, Rushdy Street, our house still stands with its shining brass plaque on the front arch's stone pillar. Why come here since we've all left for other continents over half a century ago? Has it been twenty years now since mom died? Yet she still inhabits my dreams and I long to see her welcoming me back. I enter the hallway as a ghost visiting an empty tomb once filled with memory's faint echoes. The same Queen Ann carved furniture of the entry hall welcomes me with its worn out pink velvet upholstery. How come I still remember our phone number, 63869? 
 
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First published by MockingHeart Review
 
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Hedy Habra is a poet, artist, and essayist. Her latest poetry collection, Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023), won the 2024 International Poetry Book Awards and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer and USA Best Book Awards. 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 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 and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. She is a twenty-five-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net https://www.hedyhabra.com/
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