I would have sneaked
In from the pores of a net.

I would have wrapped you in a prose
Poem that lacks precision and laid you to sleep
Under the covers of my bed.
Quietly.

So if love was to engulf me
And a longing rises from my soul
I would stretch the fingers of my hand towards
you  and dabble with the words of the poem,
Letter by letter.

If I was truly a poet
I would have limped to the Lord by now
And sat by the foot of his throne
And held on to it
With both hands
And whispered: ‘you are the Greatest,
most Beautiful, most Wonderful and Capable,
Will you create a lover for me?’

I mean only for me.

But I know
That my prayer will not be answered
Not because it is impossible.
More than that really,
Since I have never known
A man
Who has never betrayed his lover.
*******
Translated by Dikra Ridha



© Copyright 2016, by Faleeha Hassan. All rights reserved under the Copyright laws of the United States of America and international copyright agreements.  No portion of this book maybe reproduced in any form, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author.    Email:  d.fh88@yahoo.com

My innocence nudges me
As she points to the creases of my bedding on the ground.

While the bed itself, with the imbecility of its sheets,
Lies rejected in the corner of the room.

My parents’ smiles widen with the stupidity of the covers.

They alone, and the bed
proved to me my innocence and the idiocy of a tidy bed.

Even if I inherited the furniture, children
And the creases under the eyes,

Every time my bed rubs in the carpet’s weave,
I am still baffled by the wideness of their smiles,

As I lie between my children
On a stupid, tidy bed.

By Faleeha Hassan
Translated by Dikra Ridha

© Copyright 2016, by Faleeha Hassan. All rights reserved under the Copyright laws of the United States of America and international copyright agreements.  No portion of this book maybe reproduced in any form, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author.    Email:  d.fh88@yahoo.com

Spare Flower    

The African night is beautiful,
In fact, it is divine’
Says the lady, visiting Iraq.
So I announce
I am the one leaving with your ignorance,
With minimum skin and a fractured soul.
The city is an adjective
And I have only my words.

This life eliminates the vocal paths from your being.
There is only departure
And my name was fitted to me.
I became the trustee of verse,
The spare flower;
The one talented in what has not yet been written.
No.
It never was
And never will be
That I form poems for you,
Grow them inside you,
Or write them in coercion.
So beat as you wish.
I am done with living in denial
I choose another life.
Madam,
my bed and the graveyard of my joy;
I crave with my longing the scent of water
but its stench pushes me away
to the gloom of the snow of Afyon,
the coughing of its chimneys,
the doubts of its elderly’s stumbling steps,
and squeals of the bones of trees
.
Translated by Dikra Ridha

Afyon is a town in the mountains of Turkey; it is where the poet was exiled.
…………………………

It is published in (ScreaminMams) magazine march 2016
© Copyright 2016, by Faleeha Hassan. All rights reserved under the Copyright laws of the United States of America and international copyright agreements.  No portion of this book maybe reproduced in any form, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the author.    Email:  d.fh88@yahoo.com

Between two wars you came.
You mediated
And lit the fire of a new love.

And we began to spread ourselves between two suns
One for me
And the other for your eyes when the roads vanished
And we only fell out over the A
When it wanted to insert itself
Between the W and R.

We told each other I love you.
The wars are made beautiful with songs.
The songs wipe the blood from the wars’ lips.

We’re never far from its grip.
We can exchange with it our stay
And I was as I always was
Loving your letters and always want them.

You, my soul mate,
You, the voice of my voice,
You, the dotting and un-dotting of my letters
the teacher says:
she would remove my sorrows
and heal my tender soul?
I said:
I will make flowers of you;
And I had forgotten the greenness of an evening,
after the drought of my femininity.
Return to me then
So that we can hate this imposter
This idiot
The image is like a blonde
Forgotten by the aged.
Forgetting that our sky
Is black despite his existence,
And red despite his clinging to the tails of a dubious morning’s veil
Come back
So we can hate him
This traitor
Over the uniformed streets he looms like a policeman watching.
My finger tips and your fingertips
Come back again,
So I can show you my essence
I your notebook
Come back to me then,
So I can tell the apples in the basket
Like they told me about you.
translated by Dikra Ridha