Emily Khilfeh
Oppenheimer Cradles the Bomb (& I’m Supposed to Feel Sorry for Him)
sucrose, vermillion the bloom, the stem
the atomic fact is we are all big things made up
of smaller things belted in Bible & rust
in biology class we watch Oppie catch
the falling core he is poisoned & he dies
this Genesaic justice this eye for that eye
lick of blue light molecules in cellophane
unwrapped & unsinned some might say ungospelled
some might say what have we done?
what we have done is God-like & Gomorrahed
heart unbuttoned & torn from the sleeve
that thick American cruelty hot & silver against
our pink gloveless hands the atomic fact
is we are all small things made up of bigger things
a singular event swaying in a plain room
Dean Winchester Leaves a Message
the truth is we’re all liars we love
the wasp dying in the fig we split
the crabshell & suckle like fattening pigs
what feast is forbidden to us? our tender
smokescreens our particulate lawyers
our burger joints our michelangelic mummies
none of this is real not the dying
not the dead not the ghosts that kiss me
on my cheek & disappear
not the kissing me? i’m subatomic
i learn what you teach your blistered
motel bible forgotten in a drawer amen
i in my nativity scene believed
that yellow-line two-way highway lie
americans are born believing
that anyplace anywhere there’s a light on
in a window that there’s always
a way in a way back out
To H, after Visiting Hours
Helen hiked her skirt
and set sail. I don’t
blame her. She
took one cosmic step out-
myth, settled on some
grainy shore. Blue-sky
heroes split their
ligaments and look
back. Let them
gun-stab and bone-broken.
Let them ask why
the sky now-empty
prickles in their eyes
like cactus seeds.
The moon tips
like a bucket, soft
as a cricket’s purr.
The light just-so.
You crunched ice.
We agreed it tasted
better here,
in a land you’d never
seen before. The sea still
swallows
like a throat.
Where broken:
bioluminescent life.
In 1969, my mother
saw the shuttle
Earth-leap right there,
from her bedroom
window. Metal
leaves us behind
and we forgive it. Gravity’s firm
fist opens. I’m tired
of figures—fact
and myth. Let
the scientists
calculate the relative
distance of the planets
from the sun. I will still
be your friend.
--
Emily Khilfeh (she/her) is a Palestinian-American writer from Seattle, WA. She is a graduate of Pacific Lutheran University and former fellow at the Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets. She was a first place winner of the 2020 Barjeel Art poetry prize, and a shortlist finalist for the Wabash Prize in Poetry, the Palette Poetry Prize, and the Frontier Award for New Poets. Her poetry appears in Up the Staircase Quarterly, Pinwheel Journal, Glass: a Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Pushcart.