Reema Hamza, poem
Moderator 
Reema Hamza - Syria
THE HOUSE OF DESOLATION
shadows, festivals,
and speech that sleeps upright
like a tombstone.
The house of poetry
a spring forgotten
upon the face of thirst;
drafts that shiver
whenever metaphor
approaches oblivion.
The house of solitude
a wall
that listens more
than it speaks.
The house of loss
the widow of time
sweeping names
that never return.
The houses of exile
trains sleeping
on the shoulders
of empty stations.
Other houses
words, doors, days
that lend their listening to wars,
and children lost
inside the evening news.
The houses of absence
windows yawning
whenever a phantom passes
resembling the lovers returning.
The houses of childhood
swings still swaying
after children have grown
and died inside stories.
The houses of defeat
mirrors, mirrors, mirrors
reflecting nothing.
The house of fire
firewood remembering
a prostitute tree.
The houses of exile
every door opens
upon a wall,
every window longs
for a scent
the post cannot deliver.
The house of family
a roof
from which childhood hangs
like an untaken swing;
time playing in father’s mouth
and sleeping
in the taste of mother’s hands.
The house of hatred
a matchstick
caught in the straw of memory.
A Woman of a Single Journey
O you abandoned
in the foolishness of time,
your remnants invade
the torn limbs of light.
Did there pass in your wandering
a woman
who, when she said I,
tribes of history trembled within you,
and found no homeland
but her palm?
Your face,
an old pretext
to secure your shadow
in the stations
Reema Hamza
Syria
A Woman of a Single Journey
O you abandoned
in the foolishness of time,
your remnants invade
the torn limbs of light.
Did there pass in your wandering
a woman
who, when she said I,
tribes of history trembled within you,
and found no homeland
but her palm?
Your face,
an old pretext
to secure your shadow
in the stations
like a rose stabbed
by its own withering.
No morning passes her,
no fingerprints remember her.
O tedious firewood
in an abandoned hearth,
you are nothing
but an auction of masks
searching for a face.
Take your share of dust.
Do you think a woman
a page turning
between your covers?
I am not
the younger sister
of your worn-out letters.
Not the comma
waiting for your sentence.
I am the word
not yet written.
I do not suffocate
in scattered pronouns.
Songs do not summon me,
nor the gallop of steps
find my road.
I am no option in a list,
nor a bridge
between two stations.
In my heart
a voyage
for a single sail.
In my pride
an abyss
where all crawling suspicions
fall and vanish.
O you wandering
from woman to woman,
like one chewing time
to escape time,
drunk
even in your mirage.
I do not repeat myself
so that you may rediscover you.
I do not multiply in you
like a shadow on the wall.
I am a woman of certainty,
the trial
of hearts that know no metaphor.
Ask me how many women
passed through your voice,
and I shall tell you
how many times
you betrayed yourself.
For multiplicity
is bankruptcy in longing.
And I do not accept division.
I am a woman
like an idea
that does not repeat,
like the first,
like the impossible.
Because I know my weight,
I refuse to be
what remains after division.
I refuse to be
a broken plural
in an unsigned poem.
Go wander as you wish,
but do not write my name
upon a wall
you shared with strangers.
I am a woman
who does not sleep on edges
nor wake
to half a love.
Plurality does not suit me.
Nor does the crowd suffice.
All mirrors
have not reached
the age of my kohl,
they went blind,
said to the impossible:
Thank you,
and rested
in the echo.
