Ways of Looking (Emerging Writer’s Contest Winner: POETRY)

Every prayer is a heron at first glance,

                  the marbled neck of someone

indistinguishable from this house.

Every figure      wildreed      unbelonged cursive

         is a morning’s mound of sugar.

This mosque is a wood

where I sit cross-legged,

                 alder straight.

     Where I mirror my mother’s

          twenty-year-ago askings.  

                       This mosque is a cut of apple—

I mistake each slice for a mouth

—I mistake the back of every head

for my father;

red gala, ambrosia, faces arranged into

holy sorrows.

He is here with cloves packed

into his wounds.

I am here because there are wounds

packed into my wounds.

                  In my language, every line is a fallen thing.

In my other language,

.