Claire Zoghb
Sleeping With Hafiz
Forget
those distant fields
blazing sun
Forget even God
for this one moment
And let’s make the haj
to one another,
Hafiz –
“memorizer.”
Forget my husband
snoring in the next room
Let’s riffle your pages
tongue your words
with one mouth
Until
the moon sheds her
sheer white nightgown
And the noon roses
in the gardens of Shiraz
remember the Beloved
send their incense up
to greet Him.
Author’s Statement on Beauty
For me, beauty is a stepping-stone, giving me a foothold amid the muck of everyday (though even rubbish has own particular beauty). Beauty is as necessary as a life-raft or a trail of breadcrumbs in a dense forest. Is it possible live on beauty alone? Perhaps not. But it can make living possible.
Claire Zoghb’s Small House Breathing won the 2008 Quercus Review annual competition. She has two chapbooks forthcoming: Boundaries from Blue Lyra Press and Dispatches from Everest from Fomite Press. Claire was the winner of the 2008 Dogwood annual poetry competition and a finalist in the 6th annual Nazim Hikmet Poetry Festival. She lives in New Haven with her husband Nicolas and works as Graphics Director at Long Wharf Theatre. More at: smallhousebreathing.blogspot.com.