Debra Grace Khattab


Tying Down Rita's Loose Ends


(written after the poem Loose Ends by Rita Flores Bagaert)

she read a poem
and I flung myself from the room,
stumbled into every table,
on the way up and out
so I could touch teardrops
to the rain spattered window.

she read the poem
and I felt a nightmare under my hands.
my son crawled into her poem.
my son laid down on the gurney.
my son closed his eyes.
I rolled my son to the morgue.

she read that poem
and grace's grave opened up.
her funeral ran backwards.
her mom once again became my sister
with her whipcord back
tied up with unshed tears.

my son and his cousin baby grace
come into her poem
and hold the cancer child -
but I close her book,
I shut down her poem,
my son lays his migraine head in my lap
and I let her poem
be just her poem,
not mine,
never mine

© Copyright Debra Grace Khattab

painful pricetag

pain flares into
mistaken life
gobbling up my
words, thoughts, energy

crashed over
the hard surf of hurt drowns
hours away from me
and rooms blur around me

an ocean unending unresistable
that has caught me up
in its painful nerve-mapped sway
I no longer can feel

my own skin betraying me
my own mouth
betraying friends
as I stumble and speak

when quiet would be better
when impulse carries a cost
speaking out
out of turn

out of an appetite
that has no fuel
an engine
barely chugging

up mountains
made from paper,
fliers, children's math,
newspapers, bills

mountains with
no molehill to hide in
no cliffs to jump off
no peak to greet

the sun as it
carresses my tired
body creaking
old before its time

time that is spent
with painful coins
jammed between my joints
costing too much

I've run out of change
I can't pay the chaos cost
I can't wait a few more hours
I want my life back now

please

3/24/04

© Copyright Debra Grace Khattab 
 
sunshine

there are sudden
beams of sunlight
which part curtains
skirt around the edges of rooms
and drift
through our lives
with the warmth
of a forgotten hug
or the kiss
from a long dead friend

2-28-02

© Copyright Debra Grace Khattab

Bio: I’ve been published both online and in print, most recently in the 9/11 Anthology called An Eye For An Eye Makes The Whole World Blind, as well as in both online and print magazines such as Apples & Oranges Intl. Poetry, The Pittsburgh Quarterly Online, Words On A Wire, Writer’s Choice Literary Zine, A Room Without Walls, Sacred River, Sonoma Mandala and Blue Buildings. I host the Word Beat poetry series in Berkeley including sending out ads, writing a community-oriented email and managing the website http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/wordbeat which I designed. I've run 2 poetry series in the past; worked for the Berkeley Poetry Festival; and done PR for three other readings. I also write science fiction, horror, fiction and folksongs. I have an English degree and have put on hold completing a Physics degree while I homeschool my older son who gets migraines. I live in Berkeley in a triad with two men and our children. Poetry has both saved my life and brought me a lover so I am forever grateful to it.


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