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)

A Glimpse of Fall

My art teacher says,

"Never paint a tree

in Spring or Summer,

paint them nude,

when you can see them 

embrace each other,

when their antlered arms 

raise in different directions."  

 

It's too cold to paint 

outdoors where the river 

begins to melt under 

ducks' emerald green.

I'm glad the next-door 

neighbors didn't build. 

Their tall crackled oaks 

will be mine a while longer

still covered with 

shriveled sandy-ochre leaves. 

Leaves dry, cling 

to their old birthplace. 

I think of my mother 

who always wanted 

to be buried in Egypt 

beside her husband, mother, 

in their family vault. 

Now, she'll be buried 

in the New World.

When I'd tell her,

"I'm taller than you 

now," she'd say,

"Don't you know people 

shrink with age?  I wasn't 

always like this."

I try to pull the crisp 

auburn leaves, one by one. 

They look old, dead, 

but alive inside.

They won't give up 

First published by Negative Capability

From Tea in Heliopolis (Press 53 2013)

I’d Like to Write a Song of Freedom, 2011 

The daily news defies me as does the almanac when 

early signs of spring sprout, in Egypt & Lebanon, 

budding with innocence, walls rise, crushing voices 

with indifference. I’d like to write a song of freedom, 

a Song of Songs merging the dialects of my youth 

into one heart, and share the lush ruby red arils of 

Phoenician apples. Syllables fall off the table, lie 

formless all over the floor, powerless, unable to unite.  

How could they concoct an elixir of hope when time 

and again, in the land of milk and honey fear settles 

its motto in streets steeped in carmine ink where shades 

wander, forever haunting the site of their bloodshed.   

Unable to decipher the elusive pattern of unuttered 

words cluttered between my temples, a heavy armor 

pressed against my chest, I only feel the lift and pause 

of the waves surrounding silence. Will I ever learn 

the language of invisible scars tattooed all over my skin?

First published by Tiferet

From The Taste of the Earth (Press 53 2019)