Resonance


People talk of chemistry, of fields of energy, 
of parallel universes.  Some recount 
at least ten dimensions in which so much 
could be recovered...
But what of resonance, when one system
is set in motion by the vibrations of another
when people or strings tremble 
like two blue flames bent in the same direction?

What of this rootlessness that settles 
when walls collapse into dust and we search
for new equations to rebuild our notions
of belonging, memory or desire? 
When we no longer take the time to listen
to ourselves or hear whatever things may
have witnessed and stored deep inside?


First published by Pirene's Fountain

Is There Such a Thing? 


There are times when even the light of a candle 
is no longer needed, when night vision is a gift 
and fingers write in Braille an Esperanto
where all languages intersect, their veins forking 
from right to left or left to right, rising in columns 
or pictographs, forming letters in tongues 
foreign to the mind but somewhat legible 
to the heart beneath the brushing of the skin. 

Then letters stretch, meander through erratic paths 
and I can almost see how their roots weaken 
the way my bulbs rot from too much rain
when the rain is made of tears washing out memories, 
wiping the eye socket clean, blurring the inside vision, 
until we no longer remember a spark in a look,
in a gaze, not even in our own reflection.

Isn’t it often with eyes closed and teeth clenched 
that we seal the chest where our fetishes are kept?


               A silver bottle opener, a miniature locket, a cigarette lighter, a Burma pearl, a postcard, an    
              autographed book, a fish-shaped pin, a tiger’s eye heart, my mother’s recipes with titles in red Gothic
              script, my grandmother’s chain watch incrusted with sapphires, her hand-made lace, an embroidered 
              pillow cover with her initials “M” for Marie and a wish “Buon riposo” or whatever was salvaged from 
              the looting, lying among the rubble of our apartment in Beirut like a lavender gray shawl with silver 
              threads I crocheted on so many long evenings and haven’t used in twenty years, but what is really 
              worth remembering? 

Don’t we sometimes build walls that end up 
being murals of indifference whenever sealed, 
or as we try to forget or remember what was 
nothing but a deaf-mute dialogue, we see it, 
billowing like smoke, each voice, a fragmented 
monologue, twisting over itself and the other’s, 
forming a Möbius chain ascending towards 
the clouds, the way images once thought 

everlasting vanish like ripples around raindrops 
on the mutable surface of a pond when the wind 
blows softly, so that no record is kept                                             
of the turbulence, not even of the trembling lines 
before stillness flattens its skin into a metallic sheet,
deepening the roots of the sycamore trees,
lengthening the tiger lilies, doubling arrow roots 
into open fans over the frozen mirror.



First published by Puerto del Sol

Hedy Habra is a poet, artist and essayist. She has authored three poetry collections, most recently, The Taste of the Earth (Press 53 2019), Winner of the Silver Nautilus Book Award, Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, and Finalist for the Best Book Award. Tea in Heliopolis won the Best Book Award and Under Brushstrokes was finalist for the Best Book Award and the International Book Award. Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American Book Award’s Honorable Mention and was finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. Her book of criticism, Mundos alternos y artísticos en Vargas Llosa, examines the visual aspects of the Peruvian Nobel Prize Winner narrative. A twenty-two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the net, and recipient of the Nazim Hikmet Award, her multilingual work appears in numerous journals and anthologies. https://www.hedyhabra.com/