LETTERS TO EMILY D.
*
The sign shakes, they’ve murdered
The table today
And as they are—those talking
Heads—
Experts in the act
They now set up more
Tables
and chairs.
*
Here is an empty envelope
That I fetched
To imitate
Your loneliness—
Nothing of the real
Satisfies—
A sight of the flesh sends
The mind wandering:
Scribble away
You say
I say:
Between lines
Other words and names
Are born, as
Numbers appear
To remind us
As always
Of
Loneliness.
*
A letter should be inside
An envelope, a letter
Hides
Like the self
That swirls
To appease the body: oh my
Feet, oh my, what can
Be held
By flatness
Can be
Tossed
Away
One
Two
Like leaves we
Do
Hide
Triangles.
*
The limbs grow, out of a pocket
The lines grow:
Unlike you
My words are not sparse—
I am the flood that sustains
By destruction—
We are
The waters
Dragged out of the depths
By moons.
*
If you open up the tongue
There is the mouth—
That is the gap
Ready
To eat up
all inclinations:
is it for sustenance
that we gobble up
the word?
*
Lips stick, as the tongue whets
Pricks an opening—
Silence:
Wet it seeps
Into the mouth
Ordering the tongue
To tame
The one
That folds onto itself
And all the other
Numbers.
*
Yes: out of the One
Grows
the wing—
REGARDING TIMES
night’s whisper, the breath
is heavy, and the light,
there’s always light—
I can tell the hours
by darkness moving
above: the sky
clouds the
possible
the impossible
wind minding
business, knocking
things over, hearing
it all out
of vision, I pull
the dim dark
in: what is it
that makes,
and where is it
that matters
in the howl?
this corner
of the street contains
the world: the sane,
the insane, the moving
still
and we thought the world can
keep on moving, and we
having gone
out of ways
to make it all
work:
is it true? this truth
that can’t and won’t
but will
at last, the empty
space demands, the people
holding signs: the slogans
and the march,
and how does it feel
to be fought for, to be
subject
of the time—
everyone speaking
in your name,
against your name
and to see the sky
like no other, the strokes
of light, however they are
coming light
by light:
orange clouds above
view—it’s all
new:
the humming plane,
the church as cover,
and the sign:
Black lives…
concrete
bricks, brown
and red,
in the morning
light: the slogan
on the wall,
the cold winter wind
brushing
stone.
SPRING, AN INTRUDER
the flowers: almost
done with themselves—
green slowly taking
over, and passing
the usual block, one street
away:
the rust eating
window frames, chairs
eating rust
by door
and the wood
blackening,
mold—
inside is out:
everything we know
every bite we eat
begins
consuming us.
TO THE MUSIC OF WHAT HAPPENS
for Seamus Heaney
i.
Dignity is without a frame
no windows to penetrate eyes
people roll, as though
as though:
And there: dogs are tied, to
hands and chairs and fences…
And here: the word is dressed,
undressing…
Look ahead!
Move feet! Move arms against
arms, and other arms…
yes
it’s all here and there, beginning
to form
with light and without:
I wake up, I up myself with wants—
the world can be, the birds can too
shiver in the cold
and the old old
man
looks
at the track…
wait! He’s
gone…
eaten up by vehicles.
ii
contrapuntal like disaster
elemental like water
here is what I have, or had
eyeing the loss, the mad
realities that conceive
and the now I’ll receive
on a branch the wood demands
and by feet
a bird begs
crumbs! crumbs!
iii.
now the rain mixing with old
pain—
we carry our days in splashes, we
change
the color:
Oh…
by now
our tricks
all known
to us.
iv.
hear in the rain…
the chairs, the details
drops go flying off
old iron and rust
yes hear again
and look: this rain
dropping its sticks
on puddle after
puddle…
this drumming can
go
on and on
and this world
will
eventually
fill.
Ahmad Almallah’s first book of poems Bitter English is now available in the Phoenix Poets Series from the University of Chicago Press. He received the 2018 Edith Goldberg Paulson Memorial Prize for Creative Writing, and his set of poems “Recourse,” won the 2017 Blanche Colton Williams Fellowship. Some of his poems appeared in Jacket2, Track//Four, All Roads will lead You Home, Apiary, Supplement, SAND, Michigan Quarterly Review, Making Mirrors: Righting/Writing by Refugees, Cordite Poetry Review and Birmingham Poetry Review. He holds a Ph.D. in Arabic Literature from IU-Bloomington and an MFA in poetry from Hunter College. He currently lives in Philadelphia and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania.