World Literature Today – July 01, 2019

Amine turned from Ahmad and kept

walking, feeling better as he walked faster

on that road. The smoke from the smashed

car ascended in jagged lines, swirls, black

and white, gray and grayer. The steel was

hot, some of it melted into the asphalt. The

Mack truck was also smoking, but the load

of the truck, the cedar logs, were stable,

attached. A crowd of drivers had formed

near the rubble. Their mouths agape, their

arms folded. Women began to pray, their

dry palms facing the sky. Amine shattered

the bottle of wine on the road. Red ran in

lines to the wrecked car to join the already

wet red of the road. Amine kept walking

in that whiteness, in that fragrance of rose

and jasmine, kept walking and walking

and walking.

New York

Myronn Hardy is the
author of five books of
poems, most recently
Radioactive Starlings,
published by Princeton
University Press. His
stories have been nominated for three
Pushcart Prizes. He is currently working on
JASMINE PHOTO: EAK K./PIXABAYhis first novel.

Jawad’s Flock in Mohammedia

by Myronn Hardy

A patch of sunlight on the wall thin shadows

like worn nets or the snagged stockings

of a voracious lover impair that patch.

Our shoes tap the marble stairs down-down.

The flock suddenly silent.

But I heard them last night.

Thought I heard them but the packed train

that evening may have induced delirium.

I stood for five hours flattening myself

on dirty windows so the beggars could pass.

But I’m begging for that sound now the pensive

parakeets in steel cages.

Who is the stranger smelling of lake shells?

The only named bird is white hiding

in a wood box with spotted eggs.

That sound so much like the breeze

against palm fronds in the park where we walked.

I saw azure parakeets flying

to the severed steeple then to you.

What returns to the broken?

What circles about that which beats?

The solitary so against that flock

flapping as if one being.

We are against it.

We are the solitary moving in solitude.

The wind surrounds.

Later your hands through her hair

as the flock circles near the ceiling.

You circle her.

They are circling as they sing.

Sunlight over everything as they sing.

You wait for another song.

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