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.