Sing a song of glee for words who unscathed
Jump without saddling sentences with guilt;
For language mazes fused together, bathed
In the blood of many-tongued poems spilt
And splattered heedlessly by life’s wayside.
Softly then, whittle songs for dark spaces,
Dirges, raven calls, wild avalanches meet
For interstices of new noun phrases;
For the tinsel taste of a glad defeat,
For your languages learning to merge and ‘slide’.
Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Zin Daily, Litbreak, Broadkill, Rising Phoenix, Big City Lit, Constellate, Harpy Hybrid, and a number of other literary magazines.
