26
four Poems by george abraham
metaphors for my body after survival
the blood stain at the mirror’s edge; the
bitten tongue & metallic aftertaste;
the house down the block & its strange
haunting history; the creaking of floorboards at
night;
the light flickering during a ghost story;
every time you dream of your ancestors
or displacement;
a midnight panic attack;
the olive tree, post-occupation;
a diaspora of limbs with nowhere to call home;
swimming upstream with an entire country on your
back; an erasure of a history textbook;
poems,
or shouts into the dark;
a cancelled therapy session;
the quarter at the bottom of the wishing well;
locking eyes when you & your best friend toast to being
alive; the insect, postmetamorphosis;
the leaking roof in a hurricane;
the crumbling home you call
shelter.