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.