Another day’s closure and they are back ululating through long limbs of dark yippee yaa yaying & yodeling as night grew this was their jam I often listened to wild ukulele sonatas impervious to us as the pack let loose howls stirring the pitch- black, the whole caravan out for a cruise catching scent of deer while wild cherry trees held squirrels holding their breath as that tribe moved in self-proclamation. Now lights of new houses across the valley are like eyes blinking open where they shouldn’t making nights less and less dark I lean against my window, mad desire seizing me it is all I can do to stop from flinging the back door open, from running to join them in the yawning obsidian with my furious lust for life for doing the doing of living I’d forgotten how to do between a pandemic making of new housing developments gradually enveloping. I reign my self in, let the fever pass, as their last throaty serenades linger smoke on rain touching many panes other faces peer out of into the late-hour wide awake now for a moment everyone remembering the wild drumbeat of our rib-caged hearts.
Eman Hassan received a PhD in poetry from the University of Nebraska. Her collection, Raghead, was Editor’s Pick in the New Issues First Book Award (2019) and a finalist in the 2021 Oregon Literary Awards. She has work published or forthcoming in Blackbird, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mizna, and in the anthology, We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Descent, among others. She lives in the Pacific Northwest.
10/4 / Meet the Artist with visiting poet-in-residence Raina J. León / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 6:00 pm EST / Free
10/4 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Raina J. León and local poet Susannah Winters Simpson / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7:30 pm EST / Free
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What a powerful poem, all of it so strong, leading to that lovely landing: "the wild drumbeat of our rib-caged hearts." Thank you for sharing this!
Incredible form to express the notion of wild impulses battling mundane reality. That last line lingers! 🙌🏻