vinyl poetics

beitrag von: budhamati

Can’t Prostrate myself at my Grandmother’s Grave

Poem no. 5: Can’t Prostrate myself at my Grandmother’s Grave
Mati Shemoelof 
 
The poem’s tomb opens, the poem’s tomb is sealed,
You want to sing her a farewell poem in Aramaic
The heart’s mind bursting with the ferocity of the memory of her laugh
The mind’s heart shattered en route to her
And there is nowhere to return, and nowhere to advance in this poem
She stands underground waiting
for thousands of miles’ worth of 
your tears.
*
Granny Rachel Hazzaz
A brilliant exile who’s rolled into the world sans script 
And now you’re the one playing around with this exile, but she’s gone

*
Baghdad opens with a suitcase
Bedding she had sewn for her wedding day
are now in your wife’s wardrobe in Germany,
the kibbeh that you have every Friday touched by the magic of your childhood
a plume of smoke in your adulthood,
Baghdad is sealed in a case of poetry
which you surrender to your little girl

*