Hunger

I shall stand naked
above the city rising from the dust,
above the streets trampling the sea,
and feel as invincible
as the day my nudity mattered.

How short is the distance
between boys and men...
Hungry as a vulture I stand
craning my neck over you,
devouring what I used to be.

Interchangeable in a tyranny of desire,
we detail the manners in which
our flesh wraps around itself
in an emulation of wombs.

That breath on the neck at night,
the pressure of the skin where none should be,
we bite the apple with more love
than God can ever muster
for the body of Christ.

© Copyright 2010 Obeida Sidani

God is Not a Woman

They discuss forbiddens like bread,
an appetizer served cold.

They bow their covered heads,
their features morphing into designer patterns.

They write God on their roundabouts,
just another underwear billboard.

Thou shalt not lick bellybuttons
covered with hair.
Thou shalt adore me, adore me, adore me!

If I were a god, I’d be selfish, too.
Maybe next time I will be.

I will cover a woman with black and contempt,
as He would have wanted.

Oh brother, I will tell you why God is not a woman:
because He sleeps alone.

Proem (yes, katy)

I sweat profusely in airports, like I'm clenching something illicit in me. I become wet and slippery as phlegm. I reek of anxiety; the more perfume I try on, the worst I smell. Anxiety grows on me like a pungent mold. Almost imperceptibly, but obstinately, until I am no more than a concoction of animal essences riddled by paperwork. Paperwork to prove the paperwork, the stale stench of bureaucracy. I am one smelly drawer of manila folders, with proof of existence inside. What becomes of me when the paperwork burns? What becomes of it when I do? I will reek further, and it—it will procreate.

Two Things

1. My Puki's got his own blog now! It's a photo blog (with snide quips) called I never did have anything to say (http://i-never-did.blogspot.com/)
   
   
2. I will be going to Dubai for a couple of days (to visit a very dear friend, see illustrations for Ten Years, The Memory of Me, Absence Materialized, and Pieces of Me; and Mom is trying to tempt me to move closer).

Later!

Turtle Shell

Retract into self like an amoeba—
don’t touch anything
you may not desire.

Regurgitate old fantasies
when we were young and wicked—
these corners still hold our smells.

Peep into memory like a voyeur
tucking in the corners of today—
flesh is fresher in the mind.

Grow older as I remember
the teddy bear I used to hump
—with a slit where his heart should be—
now dusty and dank—and matted.

Bare my fangs
—dull from grinding—
just for show;
my bite leaves no mark these days.

Try to rattle your demons,
but your gods are just as naked
—and their skin the same green.

Sexualis

Love chafes off my edges
like old brittle paint
falling in pieces of hooker green
on the bathroom floor.

I am devoid of touch,
hollowing at the center;
spank strike me with a spoon
and you can hear me echo.

The dust in the old room settles,
like first lips, gingerly on my skin.
It’s like age materializing,
faces reappearing after the fact.

Lorca dreamt me tonight.
He spread my legs
across the streets of Cordoba
and asked me to call his name.

I yelped until I went hoarse,
tickling the letters with my tongue,
rolling them over like a nipple
on toothless gums.

بوابة الذهاب

(Now that I am in Lebanon, with the appropriate software and keyboard, I will take the opportunity to post a couple of poems in Arabic that I wrote a few weeks ago.)

هناك، على بوابة الذهاب في دمشق، تركتها
أمي تخطف نفَسها كي لا يسيل دمعاً، هناك
خلف الزجاج تغصب بسمتها
لكن العيون لا تغصب الإبتسام
جبارة دوماً، ولكن لم تدر أن
ما من جبّار يخطف الأنفاس أكثر
من جبّار يخطف أنفاسه

بعد حين

بعد حين
تراءى وجهها على الشاشة
عينين كحّلها التعب
بسمة وانت على البعد
بعد حين
تراءى شوقي كما الأيام
شيب و حنين و غضب
بعد حين
لم يبقَ من حياتي
إلاّ مساحات شاحبة
تضمحلّ دون قُبَل يديها
لم يبقَ من الحلم
إلاّ شفافٌ باهتٌ
يودّ الذهاب إليها

عاد الربيع
ماذا أُرسل؟
كلماتٌ و شالاتٌ و حلق؟
و غيابي دوماً أُهديه
بارداً بيْتاً على طبق؟
ماذا أمّي؟
ماذا أقول لك؟
عذراً؟ عفواً؟
كلامٌ فارغٌ و قصص.
لو أمكنني لكنتُ
في كلّ الأماكن
و كلّ الناس و أنا،
لكنتُ جنبك و جنبي
و جنب الريحان و السما
لكنّي، أمّي، لست إلاّ
ولداً هشّاً أضناه اليما

Nudity

__________Remember when
you used to try to seduce me
__________and then you found out
that all I wanted was to be seduced
__________and you stopped?

__________I remember because
the day is grey
__________like the first day of school
when the sky looked like
__________the beginning of abandonment
and the soggy sandwich in my lunchbox,
__________rampant with banana and chocolate spread,
smelled like the birth of longing.

__________What is it about that chill
that erases May only to replace it
__________with the fragility of first sex?
Because that animal in me shudders
__________in anticipation of touch
before it had consequence,
__________and Spring stood shirtless still.

__________Bendable
is that hunger in me,
__________like the folds of first nudity
when the clothes piled on the floor,
__________and his skin was there, right there,
bristling to grow.

Vacancies

For Teta, it's 4 years today...

A house full of absences
like a graveyard on a sunny day,
all mine to dip in
as I please.
A language full of words
and I choose none;
I have never been good at choice.
Let it simmer;
anniversaries age like everything else.
I must admit,
I miss him more than you;
fresh absences are tart.
But you loom larger,
lapel and scarf,
like a wide-grinned moon
over my sleep.

These are the vacancies that never fill.
I wonder if you stroll the hundred yards at night
back to your house
and hover over the bed
to plant a kiss on his forehead.
I wonder if you can taste it still.
I like to think that you stop
by the bakery when it’s closed and dark,
caress the wood boards and feel
the flour under your fingernails.
And that you pass by the shoe store
that no longer carries red slippers
since you stopped coming in.
Selma’s ghost meets you across the street
to sell you pretend groceries
behind rolled-down grilles—
even the dead play charades.

But when she visits you pretend
to sleep under the marble
just to smell her hand above.
And then she cries and reminds you
that it’s all over
again.

And the 2006 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere is...

Ron Silliman. Congratulations, Ron!

It was, much to my surprise, a very close call: 1 vote! So, I'd like to thank all those who took the time to vote.

Best,

Ashraf