Hedy Habra
(USA)
After the Storm
Dead trees erect as Dali’s crutches,
hold broken branches in angled joints,
forsaken trophies no one reclaims, tangled
in old vines, disjointed, distorted bones,
elephant skin filled with memories
I wish to rip, fragment, discard, as I pull,
uproot trees still resisting, conjuring
up new shoots, refusing to give up.
I gather strewn twigs like an automaton
in an open-air ossuary revealing desecrated
fossils flown from thickets and tall branches,
pile them up at the farthest end of the creek,
throw them away with all my strength,
watch the arc they form in the air,
see how they land on the other side
in a cemetery of lost illusions.
I reach for a hanging branch with blue patina,
a sunken treasure the color of my dreams,
its hollow, brittle limbs easy to break,
tsik…tsik, one by one, tsik…tsik…tsik…
Others, I leave on the side of the paths,
sculptures too heavy to lift, nature’s
Petri dishes, grounds for rippled
mushrooms writing their own memoir
in the hidden calligraphy of their folds.
First published by Danse Macabre
From Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015)
Hedy Habra
Obsessive Compulsion
I knew a woman who spent hours in front
of her magnifying mirror, chasing split hairs
like a huntress. She’d enter the intricacy of
parallel lines, watch forking tips grow into
reeds, swelling into bamboo shoots painted in
Chinese ink over transparent rice paper through
which she saw her son falling from a cliff, light
as a clipping, he lies at the bottom of the dark
ravine, his foot severed, tshuk tshuk tshuk
crisscross, cuts the slightest twist, he’s being
raised with pulleys, in a fog she wanders in
deserted streets unable to find her way back,
she’d forgotten her own name, thinking of her
son’s severed foot bleeding, his thick fragrant
blood an oddity in the night scented with
rosemary and lavender, she thinks of mountain
lions, coyotes, a jugular vein prey to canines
sharper than shears, hears feline raspy tongues
licking the wound, refuses to see the man’s body
tremble, the tense hardening of muscles prior
to rigor mortis that would come so fast, yes,
he shouldn’t suffer she prays, eyes closed, finds
herself back in front of her bathroom mirror
holding the scissors, holding her breath, yes,
it was only an illusion and her son was recovering
now with nails stuck into his leg, surgeons cleaned
the wound nine hours long, gloved hands cut
tshuk tshuk sawed scraps, sewed back tissues
and bones, the rest of him whole, tshuk tshuk tshuk
the crisscrossing cuts the slightest deviance, none
will escape, crisscross she aims, tinkers with precision.
First published by Drunken Boat
From Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015)
Tea at Chez Paul’s
We ate Schtengels at Chez Paul’s,
twisted breads sprinkled with coarse salt
clinging to our lips.
We could see the sea enfolding us
through the tall bay windows
of the semi-circular Swiss teahouse.
You described a Phoenician Tale
just for me,
how the mountain slopes
reddened each spring
with Adonis’ blood,
how this delicate flower,
truly and duly Lebanese
has come to be called a red poppy, an anemone,
with all its melodious variations,
alkhushkhash,
un amapola,
un coquelicot,
ed anche un papavero…
We walked through a field scattered
with red poppies bright as when Ishtar
sprinkled nectar
on her beloved’s blood.
Time seemed elastic then,
space infinite.
I wished to bring home a handful of scarlet light,
to keep the softness of its wrinkled petals
alive a while longer.
The moment I cut Adonis’ flower,
hanging like a broken limb, its corolla fell over my hand,
head too heavy with dreams.
No wonder blossoms tremble
on their fragile stem.
Sometimes love is only real when not uprooted.
Isn’t there a geography of every emotion?
not a precious, intricate Carte du Tendre,
but a trail of forgotten footsteps mapping
every heartbeat, every motion?
A stairwell, a car, a booth, a parking lot,
a streetlight, a gateway,
an old-fashioned reverbère,
a Bus Stop or maybe a tree, a tree stump,
a moss-covered path, a pond,
a small creek, a flat stone,
a hill, a porch or even a wooden bench?
Take the poppy, for instance. It will only breathe
and give joy at its birthplace.
I can still feel the small flower melting
into liquid silk in my palm.
I held the red petals to my cheek
like a morning kiss while you kept telling how Ishtar
or as some may say Astarté, often mistaken for Isis,
was truly her Phoenician incarnation,
before she was ever called Aphrodite or Venus.
I remember how you talked and talked
until we both stepped into Ishtar’s temple.
First published by Nimrod International Journal
From Tea in Heliopolis (Press 53 2013)
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Hedy Habra Bio
Hedy Habra has authored two poetry collections, Under Brushstrokes, finalist for the USA Best Book Award and the International Book Award, and Tea in Heliopolis, winner of the USA Best Book Award and finalist for the International Book Award. Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American National Book Award’s Honorable Mention and was finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. A recipient of the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Awards, she was a five-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her work appears in Cimarron Review, The Bitter Oleander, Blue Fifth Review, Cider Press Review, Drunken Boat, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Gargoyle, Nimrod, Poet Lore, World Literature Today and Verse Daily.
Her website is