Two Poems

Abstract

40 WLT NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2015 Two Poems by Hedy Habra How Much of Yourself Remains Within the Walls of a Home? after Jeremy Miranda’s Salt Marsh (2014) I wanted to dive into the troubled waters of forgotten memories, haunt the house of early emotions but found it empty. I wanted to find the lingering scent of jasmine where jasmine never grew, even if it wasn’t spring. Unspoken words fall heavily on the kitchen tiles: a cascade of rough-edged syllables flood the floor. My chair is glued to the table, I’m trapped within clouds preventing me from seeing how the marsh grows wider, how walls collapse, spikes and bluish-green leaves crested with plumes line the edge of the water where glasswort blushes against sea lavender. I’d run my fingers over the red round stems, crush the purple petals under my teeth to release its essential oils. I can still see the russet tree’s wavering reflections, its roots, that seemed to come down from the sky. Your body awakens each night under my fingertips, shortening the distance between my lips and your skin, until your body remembers, until the sky sinks into water, mist so thick, a hummingbird floats in minute droplets in suspension. I feel the current of the first kiss in my curls, our knees shaking. Jeremy Miranda, Salt Marsh, 2014, acrylic on panel. Courtesy of the artist. cover feature art poetry WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 41© 2015 artists rights society ( ARS ), new york / vegap , madrid photo credit : gianni dagli orti / the art archive at art resource , ny left Remedios Varo, Creation of the Birds (La creación de las aves), 1957, oil on masonite, © by the artist, dacs/vegap. For a biographical sketch of Remedios Varo, turn to page 39. Hedy Habra (HedyHabra.com) is the author of two poetry collections, Tea in Heliopolis (2013), winner of the USA Best Book Award and finalist for the International Poetry Book Award, and Under Brushstrokes (2015), inspired by visual art. Recipient of the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Award, she is also the author of a story collection, Flying Carpets (2013), winner of the Arab American National Book Award’s Honorable Mention. Jeremy Miranda is a contemporary artist, born in Newport, Rhode Island. He creates complex environments that are a hybridization of both interior and exterior spaces. He is interested in the landscape and how people control, fetishize, and dwell within it. A Bird’s Song, Unraveled after Remedios Varo’s Creation of the Birds (1957) All artists are night owls, she thinks, as circles grow wider around her eyes. Eyelids lowered, her brush, an extension of her violin-shaped heart, adds the last touches of blush to the feathers’ tips. She tries to remember the right words thrown pell-mell in the folds of memory . . . memory adds layers to meaning . . . wants to retrieve numbers and signs from slumber, relive the initial moment, imagines how wingless molecules rub against each other in the copper alembic. All it takes is a double binding broken loose to find the right combination: Only verbs are allowed. Aren’t they the heart of a sentence? What of a wordless message as those from the heart strung from the right chord? She holds iridium glasses to gather light from stardust . . . hoopoes, hummingbirds, kingfishers, finches, sparrows, swallows, warblers, orioles . . . she has lost track of how many species flew in search of an answer, each bird carrying its own song, from all corners of the earth. Her wings aren’t strong enough to cross the seven valleys. She needs to send an emissary to partake in the colloquy of birds. Barefoot, she steps over shades of silver dust strewn by shooting stars, conjures up their broken light night after night. The original formula . . . lost since time immemorial . . . led to confusing myths such as people drowning in their own reflection or making love to their own creation. She knows the secret of the bird’s song, its loops and roundness, but chooses silence, lets its wings flutter through the open window. She will try again. ...