#twopoets

(Cloud gate/ The Bean-Chicago, U.S.A)

You walk under a cloud

- Alice Yousef

We don't always understand what moves above our heads who gives clouds direction or lining made strictly of silver not gold- Is it cheaper metal?

you can walk under a cloud without thinking of it why now that you are surrounded in shining images of your own steps is it that you think of the skies?

the dead hold no envy, you know it is only reserved for the living

Who told you that you can only be on the other end of a navel only once, young and unable to talk who said you had to be an unborn child?

it is a fact now, that you can walk and be born once out of a vigor without thought or need for notes to remember how to truly stand up

yet why, you wonder, is it this atonement? make a mistake and never correct it because you are sure it will correct itself, sealed and traded like Jack's beans

let me tell you a story: once upon a time, you were born to build let me tell you something else: this story doesn't end happy or sad, you keep changing the adjectives because no one, you say, can predict the end

who wants to predict anyway?

They had told you the world had no navel but you couldn't believe how a round belly cannot have one, didn't this blue ball come from another mother?

don't we have a core center to where we stand a place kissed in times of nightmares dunked in alcohol to recover from a disaster

it is a shot to this body, tequila poured like fire in navels

imagine this trail of obsession to origin: where we walked barefoot in the grass, the navel of this universe

is where the dew brushes the backs of our ankles on a crisp windy day

this is the city of the wind, marked by a silver reflection, hanging from its navel a gate for the clouds to pass under a cloud

you & the cloud are made of one thing: so much water and a little bit of earth

Kapoor had a vision, when you distort an image you create another: maybe more powerful a feeble child breaking from a grandmother's grip  without breaking her arms

this is tenderness then, the way you can curve with others like a double sided bean yet remain awfully straight when you stand up

that is escape, when you break another will for your own, not selfish or foolish for thinking about becoming, finding your own navel

(various cities) 

A portrait of love on Valentine's day

- Alice Yousef

The shadow of a rose over a bucket, dripping

red petals on a subway cart leading into a village, almost empty

the boy who kissed, hands-first my bare shoulder blades

single women's laughter on all red things: signs, no-parking spots, shirts, blood

the teddy bears smiling  at the passerby droopy, soulless eyes

the I-love-Yous, Be Mine promises we cannot keep, yet still manage to make

The Saxophone player with frostbitten fingers, warm music

A rain that falls in Coventry pressing umbrellas together pushing the pigeons apart

the recycled wine, served first overused candles, with good wine reserved for deserving guest

Kitchen - Villupuram, Tamil Nadu, India

The Body Poem

- Avrina Joslin

Two weeks into my sister’s pregnancy, my mother moved the kitchen from near the dining hall to the back of the house which we didn’t call anything, didn’t have a name for, till then.

The previous kitchen – the one with the fancy shelves, an electric chimney, the sensible drawers, now holds a kettle which I use to make tea.

We used gas cylinders and pressure cookers; two things I’d never come to believe in, having heard of many accidents where the narrators used the words all is lost. Even if it was just by ten feet, the distance helped me

more than it did my sister who still smelled the fish curry, mutton kurma and everything else she usually ate turned sour; cooking, at the same time gathering the nothing to little she’d eaten from the surface of her stomach to be wretched like time taken away. I never knew why they called it morning sickness when she had it all day.  

These were the words my mother used to talk about the change – her body won’t take. The smell. All this cumin, pepper, tamarind, roasting. The smell, the taste of smell – as if talking about her own self twenty nine years ago.

A few weeks later, my mother and I stood in our new kitchen drinking a daily ritual of a glass of milk before bed, when I told her that loss of appetite frightened me more than it should.

Where all the tastes you’ve ever known all your life, the mainframe of your memories, the smell of taste, the taste of smell, little things you didn’t know about you but kept preserved in coded language you were meant to take down to your grave with your body

(Bedroom - Palestine)

Seasonal cleaning

- Alice Yousef

There isn't much hope left in your sock drawer, you cannot find it anywhere behind the tidy whites, beneath the bras, not enough for the coming week you get up and start cleaning

dismantle the crumpled socks while you recall a conversation bitter almond, athlete's feet greet you, smelling of cyanide, there are mismatched toes but you can still walk

soak the socks in warm water, to clear away mud and thistle stuck to the heel from skipping too much on pages of your middle school, war ridden diary.  It still cuts onto your fingertips when touched in it pictures of you in hiding and shred flesh, your scars are now caked with make-up

dilute make-up stains left on your pure white dreams there are enough young girls prancing about in your nights dressed like clowns, faces white and noses red juggling, bending, clanking their heels in your head you grew up different, fresh, you recall an almond tree for a lighthouse, shoes black and slim for cool running there were bruises on your hands and knees, digging for gold treasure chests and sunset to watch before bed

you keep your earrings together in a seashells decorated  accessories chest, you know you've hidden an amnesia a gold braid that once belonged to your grandmother's chest passed on en route to safety, she wore it to let her mother recognize her face among the children lost. You will lift her husband's silver pen, one you have too you hold it with a handkerchief to avoid touching his fingerprints   you inherit all the wrong genes, but use the few right ones, like it's all good.

change the linen, air out old thoughts it's not healthy to dwell too much in silence, they say. But silence is better than speech no one softens with dabs of alcohol, not even your friends when drunk, consult no one it will take you three generations to know madmen are always sober and that you carve the indentation on your double bed by waving

over the bed, dust a little bit stop using the word  'glitch' to pinpoint the stretch-marks you were not meant to have by birthing chocolates and a vain envy towards decisions that once landed in your palm too old you say,  referencing youth too young, you say, experiencing the future that arrives tomorrow