Zeina Azzam

The Physics and Chemistry of Things

The physics and chemistry

of things elude me

the way water sensibly

becomes a cloud

feathers propel an eagle skyward

white light penetrates glass

to emerge as a rainbow

on the other side

In fact

sometimes I’d prefer not to know

why hydrogen and oxygen cling

to each other

or how yeast coaxes dough to rise

please tell me about the speed of light

another day

now

let me admire unencumbered

the geometry of a daisy

allow me to be awed

by the flash of shooting stars

fanning across a moonless sky

Death in War

After the headlines,

the photographs of still bodies

in utter surrender

the stacking and burying

in unmarked graves

don’t turn away.

Say a prayer for each farmer,

teacher, bearded grandfather

on a cane,

mother whose scarf flies in the air,

father staring at the ground.

Think of the empty chairs

at the dinner table,

the shirt and socks missing

from the clothesline.

Remember each pair of hands

that opened and closed,

held a pencil,

clapped with joy…

and when

the wheat and flowers they sowed

reach toward the sun

bring water

to these tenacious

flags of presence

on the land.

Orphaned

For my brother

We used to be five

like the fingers on the Hand of Fatima

hanging at my front door

Suddenly winter paused,

stopped its march toward spring,

arteries shriveled, bones unclasped

Father’s lonely fig tree,

bequeathed back to the earth,

gave up, too

Our eldest brother, a mountain

we’d glimpse from far away,

vanished behind the clouds

In her final days, Mama closed her eyes

and swayed as your oud melodied

old lyrics, old friends

And now, an outstretched hand—

we’re two fingers alone, a bilingual

peace sign proud and hopeful, yet mourning

You keep strumming

as my journals fill with odes to cardamom

and cloves, jasmine and wild mint

Each visit, I long to touch our past together,

a little sister in familiar arms

of remembrance

Zeina Azzam is a Palestinian American poet, writer, editor, and community activist. She is the poet laureate of the City of Alexandria, Virginia, for 2022-25. Her chapbook, Bayna Bayna, In-Between, was published in 2021 by The Poetry Box. Azzam’s poetry also appears in literary journals, anthologies, and edited volumes including Pleiades, Mizna, Sukoon, Gyroscope, Barzakh, Pensive Journal, Split This Rock, Streetlight Magazine, Cutleaf Journal, Bettering American Poetry, Making Mirrors: Writing/Righting by and for Refugees, and Gaza Unsilenced. She holds an M.A. in Arabic literature from Georgetown University and an M.A. in sociology from George Mason University. http://www.zeinaazzam.com/