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Tara Mesalik MacMahon | Beyond the Sounds, How to Say Quran   

Somewhere outside of Baghdad and his acoustic Quran,
my old father gifts me, for you, an English-Arabic Quran.

We’ll observe branches, submits my uncle, count blossoms
until the sun yawns and sleeps
, his smooth-quiet Quran.

Spell it ghazal, sing it guh·zl, a song or a few words for a beloved—
from my father, rare as an east-west valley, my English-Arabic Quran.

Sometimes the heart dries, wans with age, lonely for nothing.
Lovely for some things—cardamom, chrysanthemum, grandmother’s Quran.

The darkness seldom needs us, though the clean-up man lowers a star.
Follows me, my father hops on, and I join him—me and our test-the-waters Quran.

Across the moons, we trace faces, face traces—father’s three sisters, two brothers.
I place kisses—first one, then another, three more atop my English-Arabic Quran.

To the forgiven, cants my uncle, all return—even the fierce orchids.
Yet what is fire, a moment of lost trust? Dueling Qurans?

Muslim by accident, father? Muslim or accident? No, Habibti, thanks God.
Are these my hands?—leafing pages, my English-Arabic Quran.


Tara Mesalik MacMahon is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet and author of Barefoot Up the Mountain, winner of the 2020 Open Country Press Chapbook Contest. Her poems appear in Nimrod, Jabberwock Review, Poet Lore, Rhino, Red Hen Press’ New Moons, among other literary journals and anthologies. Additional honors and prizes include those from Jabberwock’s Editor’s Prize, Frontier’s Industry Prize, Dogwood, Nimrod’s Francine Ringold Award for New Writers, and others. Tara resides on an island in the Salish Sea with her husband Paul and their rescue dog Hector. https://www.taramesalikmacmahon.com
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