Incoming, Incoming
FATIMA MAHDI is a
senior architecture major minoring in English
with a certificate
in Creative Writing.
She is an Arab writer interested in fiction,
visual and erasure poems and stories
that long
for home.
FAVORITE SENTENCE
"In this moment,
we are two souls, marooned..."
--from
We Hunt The Flame
by Hafsah Faizal
Inevitable
PERSEPHONE
The blood that marks me
Comes not from my being,
fertility,
Spills upon red-stained lips
Bursts from sweet, tainted fruit
I accept readily, foolishly into my hands
And the blood that marks me
Pours from a devoted, loving mother’s heart
A mother whose coldness, whose sadness
Consumes me and the whole of the world
Until my return brings the bleeding of the sun
And the infinite reaches of this halo
Brings forth life, sprouting roses from
Crimson beds, I lay and tend to in my return--
For she pours libations in my absence.