Calendar is a Verb
It's hard not to make my poems (v.)
sound dreadful when the only
music sheets playing in my head are
engulfed in flames - a greying face of a doctor (n.).
Rot (n.) has a distinct scent to which
you'd never think one could get accustomed.
here, a year later, my eyes (v.) smell the flesh
in every leaflet blown, brought by smoke.
the leap year (v.) had passed after having
carved out a calendar (v.)
in my bursting (n.) capillaries.
dread is just a word that precedes dead (v.).
Soleil
The world lives in cycles:
the birth of a new moon in Gemini
aligns with the death of a child in one corner.
they ask me to lend them a shovel, or shelter.
i give them the end of my hijab.
somewhere on Portcoon Jetty,
the aurora makes an appearance
just as one love takes its final breath.
the grave is deeper than I had imagined.
you cannot amplify screams nor adjust acoustics.
yet, a shadow's memory resets at dawn.
another cycle starts on bulldozed ruins.
the sun rises, the only constant.
I wipe the end of chiffon and
lend it to the weeping mother.
we watch the sky go purple in
one corner and orange in another.
if only the sun had eyes.
______________
Sahar Othmani (She/her) is a Tunisian, UK-based poet and PhD candidate in Translation
working on indirect translation between Korean and Arabic. She writes in 5 languages, but
limits poetry to English when she can.
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