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!

You lie

(To my grandmother, on the third anniversary of her death)

Like a ceiling fan coming to a halt
Warmth dissipates from me;
The creeping anniversary sticks in my mouth
Like pine glue on Christmas ornaments.
I bring my fingertips to my nose
And inhale the stale smell of winter;
I want to write her, but all my boxes are hidden
Under stacks of paper towels and cherry jam.
A smile slowly comes into focus:
“This was the last picture of her.”
It hangs on the wall, bleeding softly under my day
Into a reminiscence of oily eggplant and talcum powder.
A fingernail scratches my back, and then another,
Until the dead skin is peeling off like lazy days in the heat.
“She’s still there,” you said. But you lie,
You lie because there is no comfort in a song;
Because her shoulders, when we were crammed in the back,
Smelled of mountains, and honey, and old flesh.
You lie because you remember the cluck of her tongue
Smoothing away the night.
Like the day isn’t coming,
And dawn is only a joke.