…..
A face is a shell, a goat, a gazelle, a thorn
the day a daughter leaves, the door becomes a mirror
children stone a golden camel: blood
a grass bag dances in a triangular mouth
green cats, almond-arrowed sheep
a bride looms horses and indigo cockroaches
Allah’s word: a year of red eggs
the night outfoxes daggers and wooden saddles
beauty: yellow dust on a white horn
the eye in the sky heals head to shoe
home: a dung fire, a hand on the tomb
coins in a prayer tent, amber in a mountain
silky luck, bread and water for jnoun
a milk pigeon roams for turban diamonds
silver dates and henna tears hang
from threads on seven palms during the liver moon
on a saffron morning, beads of wheat and sand
the mother bird riddles the oasis and the river
a copper braid sings to a brother’s cord
a rain of stars bangs salt into the father
an omen of donkey knees and woolen flowers
the carpet promises, the drum praises the tree
there is hair. there is meat: skin, heart, feet
a belt of black tails helps against beetles
life sleeps in the dry throat of the sun
…..
This poem is from the chapbook Khumásiyát: Poems from the Moroccan Desert by Yahya Frederickson (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/khumasiyat-poems-from-the-moroccan-desert-by-yahya-frederickson/
Yahya Frederickson’s books include In a Homeland Not Far: New & Selected Poems (Press 53, 2017), The Gold Shop of Ba-‘Ali (Lost Horse, 2014), and four earlier chapbooks, including The Birds of al-Merjeh Square: Poems from Syria (Finishing Line, 2014). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Beloit Poetry Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, RHINO, The Southern Review, Witness, and elsewhere. He’s a professor of English at Minnesota State University Moorhead, on Dakota and Anishinaabe lands.
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