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Quote by Dunya Mikhail

“If the world were flat like a magic carpet, our sorrow would have a beginning and an end. If the world were square, we would lie low in a corner when the war plays "hide and seek." If the world were round, our dreams would take turns on the ferris wheel, and we would be equal.”

Quote by Dunya Mikhail

Work

The Iraqi Nights

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Author

Dunya Mikhail

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“You don’t believe in leprechauns. A myth you say they be. You don’t believe in pots-o-gold, or four-leaf-clover tea. You don’t believe the rainbow’s end alights on treasured finds. They are illusions meant for fools you say ‘ave lost their minds. You don’t believe in whispering your wishes to the wind, where on St. Patrick’s holiday they blow t’wards Ireland. You don’t believe in magic spells or longings coming true. Yet, head-to-toe you dress in green on Patty’s Day, you do.”

“A BLESSING FROM MY SIXTEEN YEARS’ SON I have this son who assembled inside me during Hurricane Gloria. In a flash, he appeared, in a tiny blaze. Outside, pines toppled. Phone lines snapped and hissed like cobras. Inside, he was a raw pearl: microscopic, luminous. Look at the muscled obelisk of him now pawing through the icebox for more grapes. Sixteen years and not a bone broken, not a single stitch. By his age, I was marked more ways, and small. He’s a slouching six foot two, with implausible blue eyes, which settle on the pages of Emerson’s “Self Reliance” with profound belligerence. A girl with a navel ring could make his cell phone buzz, or an Afro’d boy leaning on a mop at Taco Bell— creatures strange as dragons or eels. Balanced on a kitchen stool, each gives counsel arcane as any oracle’s. Dante claims school is harshing my mellow. Rodney longs to date a tattooed girl, because he wants a woman willing to do stuff she’ll regret. They’ve come to lead my son into his broadening spiral. Someday soon, the tether will snap. I birthed my own mom into oblivion. The night my son smashed the car fender, then rode home in the rain-streaked cop cruiser, he asked, Did you and Dad screw up so much? He’d let me tuck him in, my grandmother’s wedding quilt from 1912 drawn to his goateed chin. Don’t blame us, I said. You’re your own idiot now. At which he grinned. The cop said the girl in the crimped Chevy took it hard. He’d found my son awkwardly holding her in the canted headlights, where he’d draped his own coat over her shaking shoulders. My fault, he’d confessed right off. Nice kid, said the cop.”

“My minds eye, an oasis where the final petal is caught in the wildfires, foregrounding my inner complexities, a make-up of my day-to-day state of mind twisting and twirling, causing a downpour of sentiments; coiled winds of thought – a spiraling attempt at illuminating my mind. A poem can be a dream, whirling around an idea or, entirely avoiding it – my poems behave like dreams where patterns of thought drift through watery eyes, drawing on the unconscious in hazel cindered minds eye.”

“The Servants The words are like invisible dutiful servants. We tell words to each other. We tell words in a blaze of anger. We tell words in beauty of love. A whole host of servants… These servants embody the words in life. The words of hatred may become a war. The words of love may become a baby. The words of childlike admiration may become an inspiration. The invisible dutiful servants...”