"Stone Oven" by Meena Alexander

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 15, 2018   Stone Oven   Meena Alexander

Kasr Avenue was where the birds lived, In a mud silo millet seeds flourished All winter long and through the dry season Laila was in my soul, also Majnoon's madness. I was a girl growing up and you, crossing the Nile—yes a flat boat is all you had— Came in, trousers wet and flapping, Sat down with your back to me. Hunayn ibn Ishaq the great physician Thought of the heart as the oven of the body. In the Grand Hotel the waiters wear Cummerbunds, always maroon, over tunics, white I asked for a lemonade with crushed ice. Majnoon lived with his goats in the desert north of here On a mountain of sand, where the sky turns dark The color of millet burnt in a stone oven.                Copyright © 2018 Meena Alexander. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "It feels like there is something smoldering in me when I think back to my teenage years in Khartoum, where I spent awhile when my father was posted there. The banked-up emotions of that time, and all those impossible loves, feel so much more chaotic than the balance I keep trying for with words. From my childhood in India, I was familiar with the tale of Majnoon, who went mad with his love of Laila. As for Hunayn Ibn Ishaq (809-873 CE), he was a celebrated Christian physician and translator." —Meena Alexander   Meena Alexander was born in India and grew up there and in Sudan. Her new book of poetry, Atmospheric Embroidery (TriQuarterly Books), is forthcoming in June. Forthcoming in July is the anthology she edited, Name Me a Word: Indian Writers Reflect on Writing (Yale University Press). She teaches at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, and lives in New York City. Photo credit: Marion Ettlinger Poetry by Alexander   Atmospheric Embroidery (TriQuarterly Books, 2018) "Before You Came" by Faiz Ahmed Faiz "Our Many Never Endings" by Courtney Queeney "The Lover" by Reetika Vazirani May Guest Editor: Matthew Shenoda   Thanks to Matthew Shenoda, author of Tahrir Suite: Poems (TriQuarterly Books, 2014), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about Shenoda and our guest editors for the year. Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038