If ghazals were the songs of the desert then slowness
must have been their speed. I aim for slowness
to demonstrate a line that hesitates, its eye
peering out as the distance disappears into slowness.
As the memory of lovemaking, like a camera
set on video, its movement locked in slowness.
But the sky as I peeked up through your hair
and through your skin denies the lie of slowness.
The opposite! As its fabric unfolds like a cloth
of grass, the unpardonable act of slowness
defeats us. Never will you be mine again.
Never will we speed into the hills for slowness
to overtake us. Never will the morning retreat
into dawn. Or this arm embrace your slowness.
What I never held when it was mine in hand
is lost as the longing I feigned for you, in slowness.
ISSUE: Spring 2012