One Boy Told Me

- Naomi Shihab Nye

Music lives inside my legs.

It’s coming out when I talk.

I’m going to send my valentines

to people you don’t even know.

Oatmeal cookies make my throat gallop.

Grown-ups keep their feet on the ground

when they swing. I hate that.

Look at those 2 o’s with a smash in the middle—

that spells good-bye.

Don’t ever say “purpose” again,

let’s throw the word out.

Don’t talk big to me.

I’m carrying my box of faces.

If I want to change faces I will.

Yesterday faded

but tomorrow’s in boldface.

When I grow up my old names

will live in the house

where we live now.

I’ll come and visit them.

Only one of my eyes is tired.

The other eye and my body aren’t.

Is it true all metal was liquid first?

Does that mean if we bought our car earlier

they could have served it

in a cup?

There’s a stopper in my arm

that’s not going to let me grow any bigger.

I’ll be like this always, small.

And I will be deep water too.

Wait. Just wait. How deep is the river?

Would it cover the tallest man with his hands in the air?

Your head is a souvenir.

When you were in New York I could see you

in real life walking in my mind.

I’ll invite a bee to live in your shoe.

What if you found your shoe

full of honey?

What if the clock said 6:92

instead of 6:30? Would you be scared?

My tongue is the car wash

for the spoon.

Can noodles swim?

My toes are dictionaries.

Do you need any words?

From now on I’ll only drink white milk

on January 26.

What does minus mean?

I never want to minus you.

Just think—no one has ever seen

inside this peanut before!

It is hard being a person.

I do and don’t love you—

isn't that happiness?

from: Fuel. Copyright 1998.

Haunted

- Naomi Shihab Nye

We are looking for your laugh.
Trying to find the path back to it
between drooping trees.
Listening for your rustle
under bamboo,
brush of fig leaves,
feeling your step
on the porch,
natty lantana blossom
poked into your buttonhole.
We see your raised face
at both sides of a day.
How was it, you lived around
the edge of everything we did,
seasons of ailing & growing,
mountains of laundry & mail?
I am looking for you first & last
in the dark places,
when I turn my face away
from headlines at dawn,
dropping the rolled news to the floor.
Your rumble of calm
poured into me.
There was the saving grace
of care, from day one, the watching
and being watched
from every corner of the yard.


from: Transfer. Copyright 2012.

Blood

 - Naomi Shihab Nye

“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,”   

my father would say. And he’d prove it,

cupping the buzzer instantly

while the host with the swatter stared.

In the spring our palms peeled like snakes.

True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways.   

I changed these to fit the occasion.

Years before, a girl knocked,

wanted to see the Arab.

I said we didn’t have one.

After that, my father told me who he was,   

“Shihab”—“shooting star”—

a good name, borrowed from the sky.

Once I said, “When we die, we give it back?”   

He said that’s what a true Arab would say.

Today the headlines clot in my blood.

A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page.   

Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root   

is too big for us. What flag can we wave?

I wave the flag of stone and seed,

table mat stitched in blue.

I call my father, we talk around the news.   

It is too much for him,

neither of his two languages can reach it.

I drive into the country to find sheep, cows,   

to plead with the air:

Who calls anyone civilized?

Where can the crying heart graze?

What does a true Arab do now?

from: Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Copyright 1995.

Making a Fist

- Naomi Shihab Nye

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.


from: Words Under the Words: Selected Poems . Copyright 1995.

The Traveling Onion

- Naomi Shihab Nye

“It is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt it was an object of worship — why I haven’t been able to find out. From Egypt the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe.” — Better Living Cookbook

When I think how far the onion has traveled
just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all small forgotten miracles,
crackly paper peeling on the drainboard,
pearly layers in smooth agreement,
the way the knife enters onion
and onion falls apart on the chopping block,
a history revealed.
And I would never scold the onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.
How at meal, we sit to eat,
commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma
but never on the translucence of onion,
now limp, now divided,
or it’s traditionally honorable career:
For the sake of others,
disappear.

Let's Hear It For The Travelers

Two Countries        
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.

STILL . . .

Making a Fist
- Naomi Shihab Nye

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.

A NEW ANTHOLOGY, A NEW FRIEND

I found a new collection of poetry, which has me captivated. It is kind of like meeting your neighbor over the back fence, and starting to get to know her.


The depth of the relationship depends on the amount of effort you are willing to put into it, and this one is well worth the effort.


The whole world "knows" what these women think, need, and should be about. So it is both refreshing and imperative to hear from their own voices.


The Poetry of Arab Women

"Although the poems vary in style and scope, there is nevertheless the feeling that this volume begins to give voice to Arab women poets, an often-unheard group."
Handal, Nathalie, ed. The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology (2001).

It was not easy to find information on many of these gifted poets, a situation I hope changes soon. One example:

Naomi Shihab Nye

Nye gives voice to her experience as an Arab-American through poems about heritage and peace that overflow with a humanitarian spirit. About her work, the poet William Stafford has said, "her poems combine transcendent liveliness and sparkle along with warmth and human insight. She is a champion of the literature of encouragement and heart. Reading her work enhances life."

The Poetic World of Naomi Shihab Nye
Naomi Shihab Nye: A Bill Moyers Interview
Naomi Shihab Nye, Children's books
Interview with Naomi Shihab Nye
Books by Naomi Shihab Nye
Naomi Shihab Nye: Award-winning Poet, Writer, Anthologist, and Educator

Letter from Naomi Shihab Nye, Arab-American Poet:
To Any Would-Be Terrorists

Truth Serum
- Naomi Shihab Nye

We made it from the ground-up corn in the old back pasture.

Pinched a scent of night jasmine billowing off the fence,

popped it right in.

That frog song wanting nothing but echo?

We used that.

Stirred it widely. Noticed the clouds while stirring.

Called upon our ancient great aunts and their long slow eyes

of summer. Dropped in their names.

Added a mint leaf now and then

to hearten the broth. Added a note of cheer and worry.

Orange butterfly between the claps of thunder?

Perfect. And once we had it,

had smelled and tasted the fragrant syrup,

placing the pan on a back burner for keeping,

the sorrow lifted in small ways.

We boiled down the lies in another pan till they disappeared.

We washed that pan.

Naomi Shihab Nye, “Truth Serum” from You and Yours. Copyright © 2005 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.

Source: You & Yours (2005)