three poems

by Saba Zahoor

Before I became a misfit.

before I became a misfit, 

I was a child–

a time-traveler doing odd jobs.

I dug with bare hands

into the earth’s pockets,

pulling out scrolls and cities,

pocketing the shards–

the artifacts of family quarrels.

I roamed the streets of underwater cities,

trading salt with my tchotchkes.

Life waxed like the moon,

its splendor fated to wane–

leaving only the last dregs of childhood

sitting glum in my cup.

I still carry wonder like a lantern,

far from fields of neon fireflies,

dreaming of tree houses 

beyond concrete abominations

scraping the skies.

Who once couldn’t wait to explore life,

ready with trowels and brushes,

Now finds herself unequipped –

stranded like whale fossils

on the sands of Wādī al-Ḥītān.

throttle, n. (archaic) — the windpipe or throat.

I have yet to let out a birth cry.

It sits inside me

like a fish bone stuck in the throat.

My mouth has housed a serpent

instead of a tongue,

biting its own tail in futile recourse.

Like a fly struggling

in a spider work of language,

& at other times,

simply tired of explaining things.

I have tried clothing my organs

with words

only to be choked to tears,

unable to collect myself —

my guts spilling over the floor.

Having eaten a slice of life—

nauseating, retching—

unable to digest,

like a gargoyle after a heavy downpour,

I too leaned over and threw up into my hands

a sickly outrage, and called it a poem.

Silicon Solomon

Like a philologist decoding an ancient script, AI is translating conversations between whales. Eavesdropping, coding the clicks rising in algorithmic waves. I wonder if they’ll talk back to us and break Nature’s fourth wall. Silicon Solomon and the whale. I wonder if we’ll understand. We, who are more adept at talking and less at communicating. At understanding, lesser still.

Would it be easier instead to sing sonnets like the birds? Or waggle dance like a bee — what better way to write a research paper! Leave lucid trails of pheromones like ants — tiny Hansels and Gretels trying to map logic. Or, simply scream. Like the plants.

For, I mouth thoughts that scatter. Words fracture into streams of consciousness. Speech spills, dissolves, fragments.

No one

Nothing

can decode a silence.

BIO: Saba Zahoor is an engineer, born in Kashmir and currently living in Saudi Arabia. She is a self-styled peasant poet who views poetry as a portal to alternate realities.