Walking Around With A Broken Umbrella
Because sneezing my emotions onto the fibers of your
Kleenex isn’t working, I’ve spent my days punching
mailboxes, and taking victory laps around childhood
graveyards. I know you think I resemble a Sour Patch
Kid, that my thoughts are just silly string. Maybe my
brain twitches too much and maybe I was born inside
of a teardrop. I’m all passion. But to me, you are the sun
and I’m hanging my thoughts on a clothesline for you.
If I told you to disentangle our straw house, if I told you
that I feel like a puddle that is gliding towards a sewer,
what would you say? If I asked you to set fire to the world
using only the warmth of our hands, would you do it?
*
Yesterday, I became so angry that I ate a quesadilla. Then I
smashed my desk with a snow globe. I once cried for three
days about a purple butterfly kite that refused to fly. Weeks
later, I sobbed at our toaster for burning my optimism,
and when you called me unstable, I kicked our floor pantry
just to prove you right. It was inevitable. You would spit me
out as if I was a watermelon seed. You would ask me three
times a day how I felt about broken backspaces, but my eyes
were already decomposing. Days expired. I was the rotting Jack
O’ Lantern left outside our door. Every time you told me a
truth, I used a magnifying glass to find all of your potholed
lies. Eventually, I fell silent watching the image of you,
dad, melt like the icicles that later formed on our house
gutters. I tried to hold them once, but they only burned my hands.
I’ve Spent the Summer Searching Through Boxes of Genitalia
looking for Noelle’s vagina. Penises everywhere. Two boxes
of them. Barb, my manager at the UA Nursing department
has stated, rather seriously, that “We’ve lost
Noelle’s Vagina.” We need it for Tuesday. It is Monday. Panic.
I’m not very good at finding things. 90% of my job consists of
searching for miscellaneous objects. Fuck
that. 90% of my life is spent this way. IV poles. My
sanity. Urine bags. Identity. Needles. Not the right
size. One inch. Not two. Noelle is having a child
tomorrow the nursing students will watch a simulated
birth. Tomorrow, I will find your Penis. Your penis is smaller
than the ones in the boxes. I admit I’ve studied them. I admit
I’m disappointed. Noelle screams. It is 8:30am. I wonder who
will cut the umbilical cord. Barb is unhappy about my performance.
Six-Day War
June 6, 1967
The sky was blanket of explosions he knew better
than to mistake for fireworks. Six years old. Surrounded
by men who bled red, green, white, and black. He
only remembers the sound of the blasts, the smell of
fire burning in his nostrils. For days, they slept in caves
cuddled between mountains. If love is a loaf of bread, a
coarse hand feeding you into the night, a yallah ya cedo
pushing you to safety, don’t tell me we Palestinians
don’t know how to love. If love is teeth stained with
mulberries after days of migration, their purple juice
coursing through the crevices of his small hands,
don’t tell me we Palestinians don’t know how to hunger.
Baba, your love has never been easy. You tell me to be aqwaa,
but I could never stand as tall as you.
Noor Hindi is a University of Akron student majoring in English and minoring in Creative Writing. After graduation, she hopes to pursue an MFA in poetry. Her poetry has appeared in Polaris Literary Magazine, and is forthcoming in Allegheny Review, and Ashbelt Literary Magazine. Aside from being a student, she works at the Akron Public library, and is the literary arts editor for The Devil Strip Magazine. Check out her poetry blog at
nervouspoodlepoetry.com