Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.

“Traveling with the Speed of Light”

News from Damascus scrolls on TV,
a morning chat with a friend just home
from work, seven hours in the future.
My hands can almost touch the cyclamen
on West Bank hills, as if tending flowers
in my backyard. The corniche road
winding around Beirut’s tip hugging
the sea, so close to my doorstep.

As world wanderers we click on screens,
sift symbols, look with sister eyes
in oval lenses of intersecting circles,
the radius of the voyage invisible.
Stories between ethereal mouths and
ears, voices in bits and bytes penetrate
thick mountains, deserts. We measure
epiphanies in seconds, move on,

leave unintended footprints:
there are dreams of tented trysts,
shards of conversations, mistakes—
maybe second thoughts—deleted.
Like dense coffee grounds lining once
welcoming cups, or small bowls of dull
olive pits, a sadness. Only scintillas
of thoughts linger, a salty taste in memory.

Now in Washington a white moon blooms
while the sun throws rays on Jerusalem
and Amman…and this luminous language
of loving: imaginary lines around the globe,
a curving cage of messages at the speed
of light. We reach out, draw in, close as
the space between fingers on a keyboard,
far as the great meridian from pole to pole.

The post “Traveling with the Speed of Light” by Zeina Azzam appeared first on The Poetry Box.

The Poetry Box LIVE – May Edition

May 8, 2021@ 4:00 PM (Pacific) / 7:00 PM (Eastern)

Enjoy the video from the show:

May Featured Poets:

• Julia Paul (Connecticut) – author of STARING DOWN THE TRACKS
• Zeina Azzam (Virginia) – author of BAYNA BAYNA: IN-BETWEEN
• Dianalee Velie (New Hampshire) – author of ITALIAN LESSON

ABOUT THE POETS 

Julia Paul’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in literary journals, both national and international, including Comstock Review, New Mexico Review, Connecticut Review, Minerva Rising, Mom Egg Review and Radar Poetry, as well as several anthologies, including From Under the Bridges of America and Forgotten Women. Her collections include a chapbook, Staring Down the Tracks, (The Poetry Box, 2020)) and a book, Shook, (Grayson Books, 2018). Two of Julia’s poems were nominated in 2020 for Pushcart Prizes. She is president of Riverwood Poetry Series, a long-standing reading series in Hartford and an elder law attorney in Manchester, Connecticut.

Order Julia’s book HERE

Zeina Azzam is a Palestinian American poet, writer, editor, and community activist.  She volunteers for organizations that promote Palestinian human rights and the civil rights of vulnerable communities in Alexandria, Virginia, where she lives.

Zeina currently works as publications editor for the think tank, Arab Center Washington DC. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Passager Journal, Pleiades Magazine, Cordite Poetry Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Mizna, Sukoon Magazine, Split This Rock, Heartwood Literary Magazine, Lunch Ticket, Barzakh: A Literary Magazine, The Fourth River, Infinite Rust, and the edited volumes Tales from Six Feet Apart, Bettering American Poetry, Making Mirrors: Writing/Righting by and for Refugees, Write Like You’re Alive, The Poeming Pigeon: Love Poems, The Poeming Pigeon: Pop Culture, Gaza Unsilenced, and Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves. With the poet Sharif Elmusa, Zeina co-translated 14 poems by Arab poets for the Fall 2019 issue of Loch Raven Review. She holds an M.A. in Arabic literature from Georgetown University and an M.A. in sociology from George Mason University.

Order Zeina’s book HERE

Dianalee Velie is the Poet Laureate of Newbury, New Hampshire where she lives and writes.  She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, and has a Master of Arts in Writing from Manhattanville College, where she has served as faculty advisor of Inkwell: A Literary Magazine. She has taught poetry, memoir, and short story at universities and colleges in New York, Connecticut and New Hampshire and in private workshops throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. Her award-winning poetry and short stories have been published in hundreds of literary journals and many have been translated into Italian.

In the past, she enjoyed traveling to rural school systems in Vermont and New Hampshire teaching poetry for the Children’s Literacy Foundation. Her play, Mama Says, was directed by Daniel Quinn in a staged reading in New York City. She is the author of five books of poetry, Glass House, First Edition, The Many Roads to Paradise, The Alchemy of Desire, Ever After and a collection of short stories, Soul Proprietorship: Women in Search of Their Souls. She is a member of the National League of American Pen Women, the New England Poetry Club, the International Woman Writers Guild, the New Hampshire Poetry Society and founder of the John Hay Poetry Society.

Order Dianalee’s book HERE

The post The Poetry Box LIVE (May 8, 2021) appeared first on The Poetry Box.