Here is the latest installment of Poet’s Corner, presented by the Edmonds Poetry Group.

The Taste of my Land

I’d like to savor the earth I was born into

taste the warmth of the land

Where I first took shape

Feel the flavor on my tongue

Of dust, of moist monsoons

A perfect, gentle winter

Perhaps, that way I will get to keep my home within me

And satiate my appetite for what was once familiar

Perhaps my tastebuds would make it infinitely mine…

Absorbed into my system

Part of my body

Who’s going to take it away then?

Who….

Would dare to carve a rift between me and my land?

Perhaps distance…would

Incessant travel…could

Painful good byes

Amidst bullet like rain

Foreign shores once again

Tiny me, moving countries

like they were going out of fashion

Apparently, when you are a certain size, you don’t get to choose…

where you’d like to try and belong

Fragile me…breaking a little bit at a time

Struggling me, standing up, shaking the dirt off bruised knees

Strong me…(striding taller in my dreams) finding a solution

You see

I don’t have to touch it or sense it or taste it

I don’t have to make it part of my body

My soul is inseparable from my land

Woven together with bonds of silken thread

Soft but steel like in their resilience

Unbreakable

Zeinab Masud

~ ~ ~ ~

Memories of Aromas

The scent of dark roses,

ripe red

butter yellow

soft pink

Who could have thought that roses had such strong aromas?

They raced,

these aromas,

rippling across the breeze,

elegantly

(secretly sinister)

Poised outside my window

in warm Amman…

My mother seeking fresh air for her asthmatic child would open the window pane so I could comfortably breathe

And that’s when

the razor sharp roses wafted in

Waltzing

A cunning entrance

And I began to wheeze

Who would have thought

that such utter beauty,

would cause me not to breathe?

A thing of springtime wonder

Would make me shudder

The aroma of roses

Caused my chest to ache

I was tiny and very frail

I was only eight

Struggling to breathe

It felt like heartbreak

Zeinab Masud

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Zeinab Masud Agha is a trained Humanistic Counsellor and a Certified Tiny Habits Coach. She has a passion for prose and poetry and has had articles published in newspapers and magazines. Zeinab is currently working on her first book as well as a collection of poems. She loves the writers community in Edmonds and the greater Seattle area. Zeinab was a past recipient of the non-fiction award at WOTS. Currently based in Seattle, Zeinab has straddled cultures and crossed continents, having lived in over 10 different countries. She’s still searching for a place to call home.