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week of July 2 - 8, 2007
BECOME A POET OF THE WEEK
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Lana Hechtman Ayers
lana.ayers@yahoo.com
Bio (auto)
Lana Hechtman Ayers lives in Kirkland, WA where she is a manuscript consultant, runs writing workshops, edits Crab Creek Review and publishes Concrete Wolf Poetry Chapbooks. Her first book, Dance From Inside Her Bones, currently nominated for the National Book Award, and her chapbook, Love is a Weed, are available through her website, LanaAyers.com.
The following work is Copyright © 2007, and owned by Lana Hechtman Ayers and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
In a small village outside Baghdad,
a house with an earthen floor
is filled with the morning music
of children's chatter
and the chiming of hand forged spoons
against handmade clay bowls.
A little girl in a yellow dress
burns her tongue on a bit of hot grains.
Her adolescent brother with a cricket voice
sings about the size of his sister's nose,
teasing her that it is so large it can be seen
from heaven itself.
He pulls her long dark hair until
a few strands let go and the girl cries out.
The mother scolds that brother
in a language that sounds like
the chopping of almonds.
Meanwhile, the younger brother,
whose eyes are the sweet brown of dates,
sits in a corner silent, watching a spider
weave a glistening bridge from wall to wall.
Just then, a stray missile fired by our side
descends near the two-room house.
In the flash of moment before the family
is overcome by heat and by smoke,
they witness the intense burning of the roof,
and the youngest brother wonders
if the sun felt so tired that it fell from the sky.
Jennifer L.
jlinl@juno.com