daliah riyadh

Dahlia Riyadh 1970 Baghdad Iraq B.A Arabic Language And Literature B.A English Language And Linguistics Publications: A poetry collection of poems written within two decades entitled Ten Thousand Blinks from Dar Al- Masar, Beirut, Lebanon. 2007 A Poetry collection entitled The Orange And The Moon, Baghdad Iraq 1996 ( photo copies). A translated book entitled The Fall of Baghdad by Jon Lee Anderson, Diwan Al Sharq Al Gharb Baghdad - Berlin. Berlin, Germany. 2008. Awards: Hasab Al Shaikh Jaffar prize for young poets for her book The Orange And The Moon 1995 First award for poetry from Diwan Al Sharq Al Gharb for Ten Thousand Blinks 2007. Currently lives in the USA .

my wound is so small

My wound is so small, it's barely visible

It conceals rocks I cannot bleed

My small wound does not resemble the massiveness of its father

Nor the southern heart of its mother

Nor its sister's fear of smacks by the neighborhood men if she dares to smile.

Its mom does not smell the aroma of jasmine rice  of Ur* anymore

Its rusty dad soaked its veins in gas to clean them up.

My little wound - I wonder- is it a belly button or a dumb well dug by a dumb needle?

My wound is loved by whoever sees it, for it is  oh so delicate!

So delicate you cannot imagine its skinny fingers without a flute, a piano, or a painting brush.

No one can fathom those black mountains hidden by a barely there wound

But this damned wound carries the genes of all my losses

 

Ur*: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur




POEM AND TRANSLATION BY: DAHLIA RIYAD