by Tufik Shayeb
you touch the screen
with a trembling hand,
secretly hoping you could
scratch away the words
like the black letters
of an old, grainy page
you try to carve it out—
a hunk of space and time
you can no longer sense
or even really know,
when each ugly vowel
announced itself into being
an animal's low bellow,
born in the wild brushes
and ignorant of the things
we hold most sacred
but all you get is ink
caught under your nails
it smears all over your shirt
it stains your new pants
so you run the washer
wanting to feel clean again,
but all you get is churning,
a cyclone in your head
you wait, you learn
to leave your body, float
on an awkward syntax
and a different point of view
you pull out each garment
disappointed in its fading
and completed by the loss,
you now know
Tufik Shayeb's poems have appeared in many publications, including West Trade Review, Potomac Review, Sheepshead Review, The Menteur, Lost Lake Folk Opera, Heyday Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, and others. To date, Shayeb has published three chapbooks and one full-length collection titled, I'll Love You to Smithereens. Currently, Shayeb resides in Phoenix, Arizona.