Poetry
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Beauty Is Fleeting
I had a lovely beauty mark on the knuckle of my right hand. My whole life I secretly admired it, along with a soft brown spot along the base of my palm. I imagined that if a palm reader were reading my palm they would point these two spots out as my sun and moon,… Continue reading
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Walking In April
Crocus and snowdrops are the suckling pigs this spring, coming up fat and hot in the April sun. I watch as a squirrel carries in his mouth the lifeless body of a bird, deflated like a month-old balloon. He didn’t make the kill, that’s obvious—it’s just some poor old sparrow that died his own way… Continue reading
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Growing Old
Gardenia Are the whitest white you’ve ever seen, Except for the hairs escaping my brain To surface slowly on my head Like the last ever flowers Of a dying earth. Continue reading
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Never Come Empty-Handed, and Other Life Lessons
I don’t know where I truly learned it from, although I originally attributed the gracious wisdom to my Persian father and my categorically Mediterranean mother…but having now known them in later life, I don’t think this was their strong suit. Perhaps they picked up flowers once or twice, to impress, but my dad showed up… Continue reading
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The Ninth Month: A Prayer To My Unborn Baby
In my ninth month of growing you, Naima, I begin the return to myself. Your mother has been walking through dust so that men mistake her for a fallen city. You don’t yet know what a mother is. I am the first god you will have, but only accidentally, and then you’ll have more and… Continue reading
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My Mulberry Tree Is Sick
It doesn’t grow berries. At first I thought the squirrels were getting to them before I could spot them, but then I noticed the squirrels aren’t there, except in transit. There’s a younger, healthier mulberry toward the back of the property and they make a circus of that one, tally-ho from limb to limb, all… Continue reading
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September, You
“Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.”-e. e. cummings Notions of love are a sometimes-heaven, like how, with the morning, a star becomes the colour of the sky. In a bad state I begin to feel we’re in the country again, this time forever– worse, this time for the last time forever. I… Continue reading
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From The Upper Peninsula
I want to shake the world by her northern shoulders and scream! Clouds are the dreams of the sea and when it rains the Earth is crying in her sleep. And when we’re covered in snow the gods are saying never mind, let it go… But I want to pull the world close to me by her… Continue reading
About Me
A poet living in Ontario. Mostly works of memoir and poetry that focus on motherhood, womanhood, and relationship to self.