Breadcrumb #563

HIBAH SHABKHEZ

Colours, they tell me, can mix, merge and let
Their selves slide and collide and fudge
And not lose in what is what they have been.
Soit. D’accord. But then
Why does egg-yolk falling on the carpet
Turn into a sickly brown smudge
If its yellow and this blue should make green?

Through all of history,
Tapestries were made from monies of men
Heedless of green beauty.
How then should a thread dare
To see its tapestry?

One drop means nothing, but
A thousand mean a blest shower of rain.
Those are your words that shut
Out questions. Does thread care,
Mind, when you snip it free?

I must tread the fate of the thread again,
For I too wish to walk upon the lips
Of an avalanche. Be deluged and live.
Be myself the kraken, myself sunk ships.
Would I make it to green? Or egg-like give
All, and be nothing?

• • • • • •

Breadcrumb #562

KASHAF GHUMMAN

I keep Jasmine-scented candles at my side table

The smell takes me back to you in a dim lit room 

To evenings spent playing the "who will reach nano first" game

I always won

Maybe because I made the game, but I wanted to make you laugh

When your face stitched itself close from your aching loss

Every day you would wake dawn up with your gentle reminder of a due good bye

And fill a silver bowl with tiny Jasmine flowers

When you were happy you would place them in your ears

The elongated loops through which I could see 

Beyond your gray, black, henna-tinged hair 

You smelled of jasmines, your ears, your hair, your palms and your golden bangles

Your room smelled of jasmines, your comb, your woolen socks, your handmade quilts and your rusted henna bowls

Your jasmines were always soft and wet

Succulent from the tears you hid among them

By the end of the day they would turn brown and shriveled in elegiac discontent

And you would retreat further away from us

Feeble in your restraint but obstinate in your sorrow

And that's when we knew it was time to leave

• • •

Breadcrumb #560

ALLAN LAKE

Regular cleans for household machines;
my aging car ingests best oil.
Helping them last to save a planet
plus poverty breeds frugality.
religious fundamentalism, bullet-riddled
‘America’ , Chinese & Russian hacking,
Saudi journalist dismembering, global
warmongering & warming, etcetera

But slamming screen door is missing
thingy that slows its zeal to embrace
door frame. Plaster of living room
cracking; extractor fan over the stove
not keen on extracting ; switches stick
and the clock, rescued by roadside,
is a bit slow but – Hallelujah –
somewhere there’s someone handy,
capable of fixing little things
for a slice of little incomes.
Must call one soon, right after
I figure out where to start.

• • •