Emerging Writers Series

Hello all,

I will be reading at the Book Corner next Saturday, November 5th at 4pm. I hope to see you there!

“Hear Philadelphia's sharpest new voices reading from their latest work, this month featuring Arlene Bernstein, Alexandria Levin and Ashraf Osman.”

Emerging Writers Series
Saturday, November 5th at 4pm
The Book Corner
Friends of the Free Library of Philadelphia
1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103
http://www.libraryfriends.info/cgi-bin/index.pl?item=book_corner

Easy Corpses

Why do some people Make
easy to imagine corpses?
Is it the skin Stretched
by age thin and dry
over the knuckles?
Or is it the breath Threatening
to expire Before
the next pause?
Or the hair Whispering
lightly Like an empty frame?
Or just the eyes Looking
endlessly Beyond
the wall Beyond
the night Beyond
the closed eyelids.

(To my boss, on National Boss Day.)

On the Stage

In the darkness we are all alone.
Turn off the light;
I am tired of tentative company.

Under the ochre glow
Their shadows are heightened
Along the patterned wood of the stage.
Their glances weave a trance
Off the slither of the music.
Comfortable awkwardness
Beams in their eyes,
And in the spill of the stand I lurk,
Lost in the spotlight.

In the silence we are all alone.
Stretch my skin
Taught and resonant
That I may fill the dark
With my noise.

In their tapping I let my poisons thaw;
In their sways I found my jealousy.
In their smiles I abandoned my family
To a stream of applause,
To a nod, a clap across the face.
In their smiles I could pretend
That life doesn't crush me
Under my weight.
In their smiles, for a while,
I found solace in the dark.

Ten Years

To Obe

Ten years is what it takes
For us to turn into weed;
Ten years is what it takes
For the white roses to shed,
For an oud to rot and a flute rust.
Ten years is what it takes
For the humid nights to yawn
And collapse on the sidewalk in hazy slumber;
Ten years for all the winding stairs
to lose their stones,
For the spruce to grow dusty,
And for bright eyes to tire of the light.

Ten years, and we're no longer there.

The curve of the road,
The cliff and how it hangs,
The cypress that lined the broken pavement
And swayed like they could read our minds;

Your room still fragrant
with fragments of my breath
plastering its innards
like dank wallpaper
held by song;

And the worn leather couch
Where I first believed in God
Still dimples under my ghost.

Ten years is what it takes
For the waves to take root on my shore,
Ten years for the promise to let go;
Ten years to return
To the first syllable,
The fuzzy hair, the freckled cheek,
The shoes flayed at the outset.

And somewhere in the hallways
Ten years before
A boy peers from around the corner
And goes...

© Copyright 2005 Obeida Sidani

Go Ahead

To Roland

Go ahead
Suck the air
And leave me nothing To breathe.

Go ahead
Take it all back
And dunk it in the sea--
Fish need magic, too.

Go ahead
Tear it apart
And stuff it Into the sky
Until it drapes, Like shards of us,
Over the clouds.

Go ahead,
For a hand can never break
Its own fingers.

Windows

I open the windows, Heat spilling bright onto jaded floors, A tree swaying with warmth, And air burning the nose with freshness. I open the windows, I hear life spilling in Over thresholds and terrazzo, And yellow glow. A cage of thin black wire Missing its bird, Cards spread on a chaffing table With the chaos of fate. A scream, a chuckle, A wrinkled grin, And graying hair Brimming with age. An old stone bench awaits them, A feeling so new it tingles. All spread beyond, like hope Of another life, another tomorrow, Another place.

Homeward bound

Homeward bound
I wish I was
Homeward bound
Home, where my thought’s escaping
Home, where my music’s playing
Home, where my love lies waiting
Silently for me...
I’m sittin’ in the railway station
Got a ticket for my destination
On a tour of one night stands
My suitcase and guitar in hand
And every stop is neatly planned
For a poet and a one man band

Homeward bound...

Everyday’s an endless stream
Of cigarettes and magazines
And each town looks the same to me
The movies and the factories
And every stranger’s face I see
Reminds me that I long to be

Homeward bound...

Tonight I’ll sing my songs again
I’ll play the game and pretend
But all my words come back to me
In shades of mediocrity
Like emptiness in harmony
I need someone to comfort me

Homeward bound...

Eclipse

To Obe

Every few years,
Like an eclipse,
I see you once.
And every time,
Just like the moon,
You sink in me.

---

I blur the edges of your name
And watch her fake a smile,
And with my anger, proceed to bury them all.
The vastness of the hall, the resonance of empty chairs,
The grimace just before her voice breaks,
And in the hollow of her black you peek,
A punctured soul billowing in the light.

---

You come and load me with the guilt of the jasmine
And leave like an empty street with no name.

---

Flattened I sat in front of you
Picking my slivers from between your teeth,
Putting out the fire for the last time
Before you leave.

Flattened I sat against the sky
Scraping my smile off smeared walls,
Piecing it for you, upside down.

Flattened I faded before your eyes
A hundred years in one,
And in every year I invented myself,
Again, just for your pride.

Flattened, from beneath the table,
I looked up at you soaring above your skin
Claiming the stars like you just spat them;
And I wondered why, while crunching the moon,
You sounded like an angel choking
On broken glass?

The Answer / Life

The answer is not the answer;
The answer is losing track of the question.

How can you reduce Life to such banalities?
I am not reducing Life; I am calling it by its name.

Home

To Wojtek

Sunshine
Scorching your face
Spilling off the edges of a fig leaf
As it shimmers into the muddy river--
Cordoba in your eyes.
Life promising more than it can give:
The cobblestones of Florence,
The stench of Venice,
And us.
Our laughter smelled of oranges rotting in the dank night,
The glowing edges of your naked figure on the balcony,
And my smile--solitary, quivering, and wide.
Feed my dreams on your runaway soul,
Give me no rest--rest is for the departed.
I will drink in, if the glass is empty I'll fill it
With the corners of my hope,
Dusty and scarce.
I will follow, for I have no home
But the sunshine.

Second Prize!

Thanks for those who gave me their feedback below. I am happy to let you know that I won second prize at the Philadelphia Reading Series Open Poetry Competition! (Hurray!) I ended up reading You Lie and Unsinkable. I have also submitted Comfortably Numb and Piece of Damascus (this one for you, Ahmad) to the Poetry.com contest. Let's see what'll come of it...

Philadelphia Palestine Film Festival

I just found out about this today! You can still catch the last remaining few days. Here is the website:
http://www.philadelphiapalestinefilmfestival.org/
Selections:
Mai Masri, the director of Frontiers of Dreams and Fears, is going to be at its screening on Saturday May 21 at the International House at 7:00 p.m. She'll also be conducting a Master Class, titled Storytelling Over Time and Borders, the same day at 2:00 p.m. at the Scribe Video Center.
Also at the International House on Saturday at 3:00 p.m. is a series of shorts, including the provocative Diary of a Male Whore. And on Sunday May 22, Rana's Wedding is playing at 7:00 p.m. (same venue).
There's much more than this playing this weekend; check the website above for more details!

Now's the time to get opinionated!

Okay, tutti! I need your feedback again. I had asked you earlier (<--this is a link!) to help me pick poems for a submission; now I need your help to pick one for a competition. The competition is this coming Saturday (May 21), and there's even more material now to pick from. (There's more material to pick from than appears under the "Previous Posts" section to the right; the "Archives", below that, hold material all the way from November 2002. And if you click on any older post, even older material apprears, as if by magic, under "Previous Posts"!) I certainly do not expect anyone to go through it all; one way to sift it is perhaps to go to the results of "Round 1" (<--this is also a link!) which has links to each of the older "candidates". But I do hope, no matter how you do it, that you take the time and share your opinion. So, go ahead, dig in, and let me know what you think, either by leaving a comment, or by writing me an e-mail at archmemory@yahoo.com . And many thanks in advance!