Serene Taleb-Agha's Damazine.

Here are two excerpts from poems by Tala Abu Rahmeh and Nasima Selim (Aulic) in Serene Taleb-Agha's Summer 2009 issue of Damazine.


Allenby Bridge by Tala Abu Rahmeh

At the camp where children inherit
an unfinished story
the streets are too narrow
to hold even your shadow.

Ramallah’s children walk to school on the wheel steps
of April’s tanks, exchanging stories
of bombings and boasting
jailed uncles.

In the classroom, ancient
Arabic poetry curls to avert bullets
from the neighboring night.
The land that’s ours remains.

The blackboard
doesn’t dignify the checkpoint.



Two Poems Nasima Selim (Aulic) – Bangladesh


1.

at seventeen
i was small, sad and blind

at twenty-nine
happiness had returned before it died

at half past twelve
the sun glares at these
lonesome eyes

at midnight
i am startled

the sky shall fall apart tonight.