Desert Meditation of Mine, Featured in a Forthcoming Anthology

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Our upcoming anthology, A KALEIDOSCOPE OF STORIES – Muslim Voices in Contemporary Poetry, brings together various voices of over fifty poets from diverse backgrounds to powerfully articulate what it means to be Muslim in the modern world.

It provides a platform for these poets to be heard, speaking about their experiences in their own words, and offers an antidote to the stereotyped, one-dimensional portrayal of Muslims we see so often in the media.

This anthology gives the reader a glimpse of the thoughts, hopes and challenges of those who see the world through two or more cultural lenses, and provides an authentic space for the expression of our spiritual, social and personal lives.

Bringing together the verses of multi-generational voices, it explores themes including love and loss, identity and belonging, and Islamic spirituality.

Below, is one of my pieces featured:

Desert Revisited

under a whirling skirt of sky
streaming light and stars
groping for that tremendous hem
gingerly over quicksand

as though steadied
beneath some tongue and dissolving
not the absence of sound
but the presence of silence

or, as if transfixed
by a gaze, stern-serene
surveying a dream
foreign-familiar

incorruptible starting point
inviolable horizon
where eye and mind are free
to meditate perfection

there, begin to uncover
buried in dust and disinterest
the immutable letter
(first of the Arabic alphabet) Alif

—Yahia Lababidi

Coming soon from Lote Tree Press

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