Live Encounters Poetry & Writing February 2025
Entering a Chinese Ink Brush Painting, poems by Hedy Habra.
Entering a Chinese Ink Brush Painting
On my daily drive to the rehab center, I linger
on the snowy road lined with thick woods. In
this arctic cold, deer crossing signs seem
obsolete; they must be resting over mounds of
fallen leaves, leaning against tree trunks, or
under spruces’ lower branches.
Heaven and earth seem to merge into an
opalescent jade dome, its walls covered with
intricate calligraphic signs drawn by naked
twigs and branches, their dark strokes rising in
silent stillness.
I drive slowly, entering a Chinese ink brush
painting, gliding over rice paper, integrating
the black and white landscape since I no
longer wear makeup. I become a blank sheet
waiting for the words that elude me and the
brush marks I long to create. The stillness
echoes my emptiness, my enduring inability to
write or paint.
A Boat Ride Over the Vltava River
was a must to enjoy the sunset, or so everyone said, and there was still
time before the poetry reading. The minute I stepped into the small
wooden boat, helped by a slender Senegalese, and handed my ticket to a
grey-eyed Albanian tour guide, it felt like entering a spacetime bubble as
I was seated next to an Indian couple expressing their hostility against
Pakistani, a Mexican family disciplining their children and two British
women, each speaking a different tongue interspersed with Prague’s
landmarks’ adulterated names. The tour guide’s lulling voice put me to
sleep as I enjoyed a tall pivo, the only Czech word I could pronounce.
The boat glided under the soft breeze, and waters shone like polished
silver in the twilight as the sun set over Charles Bridge, its statues like
huge birds resting their wings, a procession of silhouettes moving back
and forth like giant ants, the ship of fools swayed on the murky waters
filled with centuries-old whispers and drowned secrets.
© Hedy Habra
Hedy Habra’s fourth poetry collection, Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023), won the 2024 International Poetry Book Awards and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award and the USA Best Book Award; The Taste of the Earth won the Silver Nautilus Book Award and Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Award and was a finalist for the USA Best Book Award; Tea in Heliopolis won the USA Best Book Award, and was a finalist for the International Book Awards; Under Brushstrokes was a finalist for the International Poetry Book Award. Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American Book Award’s Honorable Mention. Her book of criticism is Mundos alternos y artísticos en Vargas Llosa. She is a twenty-two-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. https://www.hedyhabra.com/