2k14.4

UP AND DOWN // JOHARA ALMOGBEL

in ,

Up and down
And all around
The merry carousel goes..

A tip, a tap
In a teeny gap
Grows a secret bloody rose.

“Look mummy, see!”
Cries a he
as the twisting flower glows

Only.

Leaves asunder
Roots start to plunder
All the souls nearby

The horses knocked askew,
The mummies started to stew
And the kids began to cry

Soon the town
Was but a brown
Stain ‘neath the big blue sky

And then the rose bled
marked the earth red,
and moved in the blink of an eye!

Somewhere else.

And it smiled,
as it grew more,
straight straight
up from hell.

THE SUN // SHAHAD T

in ,

I am a good daughter.
Are you really?

I am worthy of being proud of.
I am worthy of so much love.

Repeat that again, and again.

You try so hard to satisfy her.
You both cry.
And a dawn of a new day awakens you to the same, endless cycle.

We are both getting sick.

Physically sick, mother.

Can love be the cause of death?

Is being fixated with the sun's beauty a sure way of becoming blind?

Oh, mother!
Perfection does not exist.

It all slips away.
Everything does.

Oh, mother!
How will I ever calm our hearts?

Your embrace is too tight.
But no!
Don't let go!

Oh, mother.
I am yours.
Aren't I?

Stinging wounds.
No one knows.
They love us.
We are perfect.
Sisters, they say.

Oh, mother..

My purest love.
Cleansing me
Ever so ruthlessly.

Blurriness.
I can't see.

A cost?
Maybe.
It is the greatest, afterall.
The greatest love
that kills
But it only
keeps you alive.

THE LEGEND OF THE LAST SAMBOOSA // OMAR ENEZI

in ,
THE LEGEND OF THE LAST SAMBOOSA // OMAR ENEZI

Hunger.

It is the imperfection of all that is mortal; a limitation of every living thing; another one of the Reaper’s many scythes.

In a distant land of sand, a war had begun and ended. Villages burned, cities fallen, and corpses lay upon corpses. Food became scarce in this unyielding land of sand, so much that only the strong could live another day on a few crumbs, not enough to sate a bird. The weak? They perished long ago.

On a cloudy Ramadan night, in this very land of sand, walked a lone traveler. Baraho was his name. Tall of figure, brown of skin, with a full head of silver hair. Brave at heart, calm at mind, with an empty stomach.

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ARRIVALS // NOUF ALHIMIARY

in ,

-i-

i write endlessly about things i could
care less about like the recurring
themes of obedience and rebellion in
Shakespearean plays, but i’m anxious
and fidgety and restless and on the edge
in my attempts to write about how you
only smiled with your mouth shut.

-ii-

the first time we spoke you said it’s
ridiculous people cared i gave myself
a bad haircut, that i flow like water and
my external body is nothing but a
container, a juice box. 
what truths would i have been let into
if i hadn’t cut you off every time you
looked so sour like you’re choking on
words? 

-iii-

yesterday 
i laid down on a rooftop and stargazed,
pearls receding the navy sky tinged
with grey dim shapes and a half 
visceral memory of feeling small around 
you, when you said my container
sometimes gets in the way when you
try to get closer to the fluid.

-iv-

lately i’ve been tracing the recollections
i hid within my sinew out of fear.
i rolled the fright and agitation and
the remnant of your essence along with 
tobacco’s pink sweet honey scented flowers
and smoked them, but the aftertaste was
still bitter.

 

more of nouf's photography // writing

SERENDIPITY // HALA ABDULLA

in ,

1

You tell me you find god in the
way Sunflowers shift towards
the sun, but I find him in the
way my eyes and hands always
turn to you.

2

It took you twenty-three years to
finally find me and there are days
when I resent you for this.

I’m 
sorry.

3

I do not recall any of the versions
of myself that existed before I first met
you.

I do not want to fill in the blanks
in my memory.

4

I have written love-letters to
every single hair on your head,
to every single skin cell on
your body. It is still not enough
to show you what I feel for you.

I know nothing ever will be.

5

In a world where eyes exist,
you say I shouldn’t even have
to speak. But there is so much
I want you to know that I don’t
trust my eyes to tell you.

I want you to know.
I want you to know just how
much of me you’ve healed.

6

You and I, we made religions
out of tasting one another.

(Lover, mercy me.)

7

I want to scream “I love you!”
at the top of my lungs from
each and every one of this
godforsaken city’s rooftops

but instead,
I am writing this
poem.

TELL HIM // SHAIMA ALSSLALI

in ,

Imagination runs its wildest when it’s close to home, you tell him that.
Tell him that he’s only brilliant in the afternoon, when the sun only casts dullness upon his soul, and obligation forces compensation.

Tell him that he’s only funny when he’s afraid; when comfort pulls his limbs apart, when a joke is so mundane that he can’t resist wallowing in.

Tell him that he’s not eloquent. Tell him he’s brutal. Tell him that I watch him distort every little nuance of meaning into binary code, into garbles of morphemes and it only amplifies the wonder of him.

Tell him that my prose is the answer to the crux of the matter. Tell him that I can’t carry his dead poetry between the worlds anymore.

Tell him that the ink is running dry and that the words are going wild and that there is absolutely no sense in my failed attempt at expression.

He will understand it. He will. Because there’s nothing in this blasted, massive excuse of a universe he hates more than missing on a prospect of a thought. He will understand because he will read this in the afternoon, when there’s nothing he could do but be brilliant.