Three Poems By Siham Karami

Tropical Storm

Night swells rainbands’ rhyming catapults
against the haven of our walls and porches
flooding wild-flung puddles in the air
and hapless water bottles cruise the streets. 
A howling dawn reports its restless rain
broadcast into every whirling tree
till suddenly the Eye gives utter truce,
its held-breath Seeing an eternity,
moves unblinking on its throne of chaos, 
tumult heralding its passing-through
over waters turbulent with praise
as tiny creatures huddle open-eyed 
alive and wet, and more than us, aware. 

All the Dying Roses

Still uplifted, pinks and reds hold soft
their drying hours where pollinators flew
searching for some clue. 

No honey in the jar, no homemade anything,
the way of things is dying, no sign
grand old worlds were mine. 

Basking in the sun, my lizard ways sink deep
into their moment, no accolades but calm—
petals fall like psalm. 

Bio-photography

I suppose it was a grasshopper with invisible
eyes or something green where eyes should be
as he clung body full against green blade 
motionless and I peered into him, searching
as if he were a lightweight piece of me, legs
sawtoothed, bent and then I took the shot
and took it home to take my time to see
the tiny pupils and thin green antennae—
but what they sensed was nowhere to be sought 
and what I thought I knew was only dregs. 

Siham Karami is the author of To Love the River (Kelsay Books, 2018). Her work has been published in The Orison Anthology, Smartish Pace (third place winner in the Beulah Rose contest), Tiferet Journal, Orchards Poetry (featured poet), and Think Journal, among many others. A three-time Laureate prize-winner in the Maria W. Faust sonnet competition, she also enjoys long walks and nature photography.