Fire ran horrified
from its ashes.

In the afterglow,
cinematic shadows fled

from flesh and blood.
Scars appeared,

followed years later
by their wounds.

Blinks of red
dinged relentlessly,

but there was
nowhere to stop

for the train
pulling its wreckage.

They were nearing the end of their story.
The fire was dying, like the fire in the story.
Each page turned was torn and fed
to flames, until word by word the book
burned down to an unmade bed of ash.
Wet kindling...

My first instinct is to translate
the word. Make it easier to understand
without saying the word itself.
I feel guilt for this mistake—
for changing languages instead
of describing. Isn’t this an easy way out?
My mother and I are playing charades
alone. We make this...

My brother still bites his nails to the quick,
but lately he’s been allowing them to grow.
So much hurt is forgotten with the horizon
as backdrop. It comes down to simple math.

The beach belongs to none of us, regardless
of color, or money....

This century is younger than me.
It dresses itself
in an overlong coat of Enlightenment thinking
despite the disappearing winter.
It twirls the light-up fidget spinner
won from the carnival of oil economies.
In this century, chatbots write poems
where starlings wander from their murmuration
into the denim-thick...

We've always been out looking for answers,
telling stories about ourselves,
searching for connection, choosing
to send out Stravinsky and whale song,
which, in translation, might very well be
our undoing instead of a welcome.

We launch satellites, probes, telescopes
unfolding like origami, navigating
geomagnetic storms, major disruptions.
Rovers...

When I die,
bury me in the sky—
no one is fighting over it.

Children are playing soccer
with empty bomb shells
(from the sky I can see them).

A grandmother is baking
her Eid makroota and mamoul
(from the sky I can taste them).

Teens are writing love...