Your Parents’ House

By ZEINA HASHEM BECK 

Your parents grow older, perhaps
old. The same conversations,
yellow like the walls,

not all the walls, do not
exaggerate. Repetition, yes,
is a woman with curly hair,

you find her there, hands in her lap.
The scent: you wonder
how something intangible could

hold. You like the certainty
of the old sofa and cooked yoghurt,
of garlic and dry mint leaves.

You like the little girl in your room
biting pencils, drawing
circles in the air.

 

Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet with a BA and an MA in English Literature from the American University of Beirut.

Listen to Zeina Hashem Beck and Jaydn DeWald discuss “Your Parents’ House” on our Contributors in Conversation podcast.

[Click here to purchase your copy of Issue 07]

Your Parents’ House

Related Posts

an image of train tracks, seen through a window. reflection is faintly seen

Addis Ababa Beté

ABIGAIL MENGESHA
Steel kicks in this belly. // Girls with threadbare braids / weave between motor beasts and cement bags. // Tin roofs give way to glass columns. / Stretching as if to pet the clouds. // In the corners: cafés. // Where macchiatos are served / with a side of newspapers.

Image of a mirror reflecting another mirror.

February 2023 Poetry Feature

ZUZANNA GINCZANKA
I’m searching my thoughts for a man’s lips, to bind his arms in a braid, / When in the stifling sleeplessness of a second a sob breaks out— / —and now purse your lips and coolly, firmly condemn me: here you have my nights—bare, shelled like peas.