Love Poem with Dreams and War Stories
by Dana Alsamsam
Beside me you sleep simply with the deep of deathbeds
vacant-minded while I lie awake our life
ballooning in my chest cavity All day we nurse
a sweet garland of joy you won’t eat the last bite
unless I feed it to you won’t tell me where your mind wanders
but I hear the warplanes I hear the vast unfolding
the flames the fist the hatchet the sun
the sun the contrary sun Sometimes there is too much
to tell you when you wake the words shuffle but do not
articulate In Arabic lovers say ya’aburnee you bury me
My love you bury me next to eight hundred of your dearest
hatchets your anger blooming from the ground
like maple blossoms ya’aburnee my love you conquer
and crown me convince me the luxury of ruin until
pins of sunshine fall brightly into my palms It’s bittersweet
isn’t it the wound is the place the light enters you So in dreams
I enter you from all sides So in dreams
we are full with light
Dana Alsamsam is a first generation Syrian-American from Chicago and is currently based in Boston where she works in arts development. A Lambda Literary fellow, she received her MFA in Poetry from Emerson College where she was the Editor-in-Chief of Redivider and Senior Editorial Assistant at Ploughshares. She is the author of a chapbook, (in)habit (tenderness lit, 2018), and her poems are published or forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review, North American Review, The Shallow Ends, The Offing, Tinderbox, Salamander, BOOTH, The Common and others.
