rootsandwings

[rootsandwings]

[rootsandwings]

Holding Fourth

Do the deer know it’s the Fourth

of July? I saw two babies nosing

through the underbrush just as

as many millions fired up the grill

and behind a teary rain flowing

down the cheeks of bullet proof

glass in DC an indecent bully held

our pupils hostage. Do the kids

in cages know it’s the happy birth

day of Lady Liberty? The Home

of the Brave and the land of

the Free? Are only these lines

backwards or is the whole damn ship

of state sinking into the quicksand

of the small, small man who’s commandeered the tanks to news-

feed his monstrous bitter deeds.

Sophia Naz, July 4th 2019

[rootsandwings]

April Fools

Why does April make fools of us?

Is it the giddy rush of color across

the plush green cheeks of hills

marching’s past, it’s April! The thrill

a lady in waiting to become

a summer lover languid in robe

of blue twilight that takes forever

to come off. (G)listen, to April, trill

of that ephemeral whistle

between the eardrums, the bird

that bears every season but wears

a magical plumage on the page

As swans of calla lilies sing in spring

Poets fed on cruelty spread their wings

Sophia Naz

April 1 2019

[rootsandwings]

Lightning

When they ask why you are feeling blue how can you explain

that it’s not just the fat lip that was presented

wrapped up in a fig leaf of filial duty on

your eleventh birthday

It’s all the veins of the broken rivers tattooed daily on the bodies of women

who pass by wordlessly as if they were water

and the world a cold sieve that slices them

through and through and moves on

without a second glance

How can you explain that you can’t move on

that your feet are stuck in the mud of this indigo

that you want to fossilize your bones into the purest lapis

crush them in the rigor mortis of your skull-bowl

make an indelible pigment for the soles of the silent ones

so that they may flash their feet at their tormentors

and a blinding blue eye may strike like lightning.

Naz

[rootsandwings]

Announcement

I interrupt

an Orange Ogre’s egregious excess

of awful untruths

To affirm

that there is only one

National Emergency

and his name

is Donald Trump.

©️Sophia Naz

[rootsandwings]

Tiny Love

Tiny Love

Tiny as the ruby

teeth of pomegranates, 

beauty that bites

when least expected

Little slip of a love

making no sense of fall 

leafing through last season’s threads

Takes you by the bit

Tiny like grit, holy Braille 

blinding your tongue 

Tiny as wet letters of rain

late into the night, setting type 

until dawn, hot off the presses

rose disrobed

Itty bitty atomic love

quick as lightning 

to render dumb

Strikes you, the bait

a crumb of sugar,

infinitesimal,

love lies in wait, patiently ...

©️Sophia Naz

[rootsandwings]

Nominated for the Pushcart for the 2nd Time!

[rootsandwings]

For Meena Alexander

For Meena Alexander, 1951-2018

You unrolled a bed 

of language, a midnight train

to 68th and Lex-

icon to pull out all

the pins, become seamless 

address to clothe exile, lucent

geography, seismic mouth

The poems, boxed up alive

in thin coffins of books

are not just your voice

leafing on a  perennial 

celluloid Spring, rising 

incense in a poet’s skull

they bowl a world 

mulled words stretch 

marks of a birth, the bird flown

and we your nest of kin

read the claws’ Braille, feel 

the electric thrill, our minds blown 

by the feathers breathing on our skin. 

Sophia Naz

21 November 2017

[rootsandwings]

The amazing Professor Al Filreis and Douglas Kearney do a close reading of my poem, Habeas Corpus.

[rootsandwings]

Symphony

Solitary Japanese plum

scarlet plumage rustling softly

wore out her sleeves as a geisha 

from April to Autumn 

When the season takes its leaves 

passion cooling

umeshu sours to vinegar

rumors ripen on 

The grapevines, a chorus joins in,

no longer marooned, each soliloquy

burnishes its tenor, ruby throats of turncoats 

crescendo in symphony.

©️Sophia Naz

[rootsandwings]

[rootsandwings]

Magical Problems & Their Solutions

The broom is stuck in sweep mode

Eye of Newt Gangrene is out of stock on Amazon

Your coven has worked themselves to the bone trying to keep up with millions of orders for Trump Voodoo Dolls

Melania just ordered a life size version along with one hundred and thirty one thousand pins

There is no doubt she will sink them in

your titanic presidency

from coast to coast there’s Stormy

weather come calling

Oh and one more thing

There is no witch hunt. We witches do not hunt. We haunt.

©️Sophia Naz

August 23 2018

[rootsandwings]

The Marriage of The Foxes

One bright blue day he came out of nowhere, his flame-tail curling question hooked you, child hungry for a fairy tale of feather and fire

that day you remember it rained while the sun was shining bright as a newborn’s eyes seeing everything for the first time

and still the red fox sat there unmoving as if waiting for a sign a meeting of meaning or was it madness? In the sky there were

raindrops dancing with the sun burning in their bellies, blinking time is an eclipse and you penumbra, alone with a legend

fan with feather quills the rebel   skies whose magic is a marriage of silver foxes, filled with spring- fire makes love to water, sings

Sophia Pandeya

[rootsandwings]

Dividend

(After Naomi Shihab Nye)

And here I was, so proud to be

the proverbial promethean

wordsmith so volatile as to fire

off lines like shooting stars

the light of lines captive as

fireflies in a summer’s night jar

Little did I know it was the dark

earth that was flammable beyond

wild imagination, that it would lay

my years of toil to waste

And so for the sins of humanity

or rather the oily oligarchs

I have paid richly in the coin of loss

The sole dividend of this pain

is poetry.

Naz

[rootsandwings]

Magnets

Like cats to milk Ducks to water Hummingbirds to nectar Gamblers to dens Bees to pollen Babies to breasts Drunkards to wine Stars to night Kites to wind Squirrels to hollows Eyes to rainbows Owls to darkness Eyelids to sleep Lilies to lakes Canoes to rivers Ships to oceans Snow to mountains Clouds to skies Seeds to earth Pens to paper Ants to sugar I take

to your lips.

Sophia Naz

[rootsandwings]

Lightning

When they ask why you are feeling blue how can you explain

that it’s not just the fat lip that was presented

wrapped up in a fig leaf of filial duty on

your eleventh birthday

It’s all the veins of the broken rivers tattooed daily on the bodies of women

who pass by wordlessly as if they were water

and the world a cold sieve that slices them

through and through and moves on

without a second glance

How can you explain that you can’t move on

that your feet are stuck in the mud of this indigo

that you want to fossilize your bones into the purest lapis

crush them in the rigor mortis of your skull-bowl

make an indelible pigment for the soles of the silent ones

so that they may flash their feet at their tormentors

and a blinding blue eye may strike like lightning.

Naz