Hiba Heba, a Pushcart-nominated poet from Pakistan, currently works as an English Instructor at FAST-NUCES, Islamabad. Her poems have been published in Eunoia Review, Fragmented Voices, Aleph Review, and Poetry Wales, among others. In 2021, Hiba was the first-runner up for the New Feathers Award. Her debut poetry collection, "Birth of a Mural" (Golden Dragonfly Press, 2023), was featured in The News Sunday as one of the Best-loved Books of 2023. She fondly misses her cat Daisy, who holds a special place in her heart. Find more about her at www.hibaheba.com.
Farewell/Fearwell
Small visual: a bottle of vitamins beside my pillow,
like hope trapped in my windowless room.
Qalb. It means heart. Very small and real in the duvets of chest.
If qalb is deemed a prefix, what follows it in a time of war?
Deficiency. My breath warns me with every exhale, it needs
a break/brake. Iron deficiency. Feline, Female, Featherbrain, Feeder. Feline, Female, Featherbrain, Feeder.
How many truths have I fed you on the dinner plate
when you’re on your snooze mode?: the roach drowned, finally,
tap water is tepid for now, Daisy came back
from her mouse-chasing expedition. You clench your jaw, You clench your jaw,
then release it. Of course, how many cats actually chase mice
in reality? Firdaus forgot to dust the windowsills, Fffffassffforgot to dust the windowsills,
I’m thinking of getting myself a butterfly haircut,
TikTok’s turning vapid, my body aches when I lift up my arms, vapid, my body aches when I lift up my arms,
my body aches, my body aches. I search for phosphines of gullibility
in your expressionless eyes. You’re your own life.
You browse YouTube. I rattle vitamins in my palm
like an all-knowing toddler. I ask you, "when will this genocide end?", “when will this genocide end?”
Your snooze mode is indelible. Instead I ask the crow perched outside.
It jerks its neck. Pulls away from my gaze. Wrestles to unclench
its claws. Flies. My problem is, I ask the predator, I tell
the predator, I feed, and feed off. It's a miracle when it snows in my city, feed off. It’s a miracle when it snows in my city,
the city sinks into its illusory reprieve. Fear is now smaller
than fatigue. Fear is even smaller than your gut.
Divorce
The only thing that drives
us right now
is our grief's hubris.
We slip a lot lately.
Tongue slips,
habitual ditz.
I remember Ma,
how she’d curl her lips
when I talked
about finding love.
Men as the allegory
of sabotage.
The grass is dried up
in some ghost-garden.
One is Indivisible
One journalist revisits his past on the hospital bed,
his life is an illicit affair with his pen.
One poet dies at 80, her poetry has deceived time.
One child cries on his father's belly while the bombs
reincarnate amber sunsets in the sky.
One constellation drowns under the loose ropes of oceans.
One family sits on the winter-fresh bench,
sips tea in Styrofoam cups;
holding the illusion of life in its hands,
one army of ants dies under its feet.
One army destroys another & the rest is collateral.
One politician affirms it's okay & one mind nods back.
One roadside beggar cradles a pre-loved sweater in his arms.
One fear becomes destiny in one hemisphere of the earth.
One camera counts the bodies, one camera
loses its foresight in the dark of the rubble.
One grey wolf hunts, one siskin gathers.
One is always one, even when plural, & one
plus one plus one plus one is genocide.
When all is collateral, tell me are you the parasite
or the predator? One world now calls you by your name.
Blue Lotus
I’m caught between a malachite-blue
kiran; the first ray, the language that fails
in other cities, in the warm mists of mouths.
Last night’s moon was a utopian imitation
of people living under marble roofs,
their bodies circumnavigating the silver
of ceiling fans, someone was singing
raat yun dil mein…, we fell into a deep sleep.
The world is a lotus, & you know all the tales
about lotus: we eat what sustains us.
Now these walls are karmic-blue, velvet shadows
unite with the thousand mirrors in the room,
there is a false prophecy dripping from everything
that tilts in its own fashion: the lamp,
the yellow-sapphire in the flame, my three-day-old
hair, a frame singing an Arabic prayer.
Maria dms me, she often tells me to step into
the world, enmesh with the sounds; the pain
of continuity. I’m a silent clock, the world secretly
pendulates between my thoughts. I tell Maria
about my history on detachment, how I’ve
unlearned the vagaries of love & war & faith.
When part of a world collapses, the entire
world collapses. I lounge on the noxious sillage
of a lotus, the faint world. Now I’m canopy-dew,
the blue of your senses, five of wands.
Awaz-e-Achanak
i want to repeat the word, suddenly;
achanak, dard utha:
suddenly, melancholy hit,
funny how it hits in another tongue,
but rises like a dormant force in my own,
suddenly, I miss a friend, any friend, one who’s here
but we stopped talking,
but we hit a dead end, achanak
i wonder how there are a dozen
interpretations for quietude in my mother’s voice,
a chaa nak: there is chaah in achanak;
that silent breath when it ends chaaah,
chaah isn't an ostentatious belief, isn't a bellow
for the dead or the dying fire,
chaah hai, kis ki?
not kiss, but who, the raised-eyebrow who, hoot!
awaaz ki chaah udaasi ki chaah gham-e-zindagi,
lutf-o-ulfat, achanak uth janay ki chaah,
don't cha wish? my tongue googles its own history,
wikihow: i'm bombarded with interrobangs —
achanak !?
'suddenly' now sounds lackadaisical
when i reminisce emptiness in my own language,
and then achanak, dard utha, uthta gya,
lifting up, rising in the heart, not like milk in a pan,
nor like pneumonia in the lungs,
uthta gya; it rose, and rose like nothing
Comments