KNOT Magazine
Fall Issue 2022
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/