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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; The Taste of the Earth, won the Silver Nautilus Book Award and Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Award; Tea in Heliopolis won the USA Best Poetry Book Award and Under Brushstrokes was a finalist for the International 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 one-time-nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. https://www.hedyhabra.com/
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Hedy Habra’s trajectory and ars poetica
Before coming to the US, I lived in Egypt, Lebanon, Greece, and Belgium. I made roots everywhere I’ve lived, developed a sense of belonging encompassing cultural influences, and acquired languages. I hold a BS in Pharmacy from the French St Joseph University. I subsequently earned an MA in English, an MFA, and an MA and PhD in Spanish from Western Michigan University where I taught Spanish for over three decades.
I have a passion for art and I’m a visual artist, so art has always been an inherent part of my writing, whether literary criticism, fiction, or poetry. I love writing prose poems but also experimenting with forms, such as haikus, anaphoric poems, abecedarians, found sonnets, haibuns, pantoums, and most recently ghazals. I have written extensively about roots, origin, and displacements. The stories in Flying Carpets (Interlink 2013), as well as the poems in Tea in Heliopolis (Press 53 2013) and The Taste of the Earth (Press 53 2019), focus on Egypt and Lebanon, weaving linguistic, historical, and mythical components with personal memories.
My first ekphrastic poetry collection, Under Brushstrokes (Press 53 2015) was inspired by artists of different genders, styles, and periods, whereas my most recent ekphrastic collection, Or Did You Ever See The Other Side? (Press 53 2023) is mainly inspired by contemporary and surrealist women artists. I love to engage in a dialogue with the artwork itself, with one of the characters in the paintings, or at times with the artist.
I am currently compiling a poetry manuscript focusing on memories of my childhood and formative years, including ekphrastic poems. I would also like to revise a bilingual manuscript of my selected poems that I’ve translated from Spanish to English and vice versa. [HH]
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Hedy Habra: Six Poems
BRICOLAGE
Go every day a little deeper
into the woods, collect acorns,
twigs, thorns, fallen leaves,
pine needles, a fern’s curl,
a bird’s nest, a lost feather,
spring air, hot, humid air, a raindrop,
a touch of blue, a ripple,
and why not the hush
of your steps over moss,
the trembling of leaves
at dusk against black bark?
Put it all in a bag and shake it:
you will retrace your steps
within the clearing, hear frightened
flights, see the rain darken the deck,
flatten oak leaves, silence songs,
answer the root’s mute prayer.
(First published by GraFemas: Letras Femeninas
From Tea in Heliopolis)
BLUE HERON
An Egyptian sculpture
lost in the Northern wilderness,
the blue heron stands out
in the whitened landscape,
mimics an ibis’ fixed stare,
studies the frozen creek,
sensing trembling gills
beneath the transparent sheet.
But why land in my backyard
I wonder, where no lotus ever grows?
Unless he sees his own ancestral roots
in my wide-open eyes lined with kohl,
and knows that water from the Nile
still runs in my veins since birth.
In warmer seasons he has seen me
feed the silver fish,
tend the vegetable garden,
bend over perennials
springing stronger each year,
add more seeds,
making this our home,
where we’ve lived the longest ever.
Today he saw me walk in circles
in the stillness of barren trees
over crisp snow flakes
masking all signs of life,
the forget-me-nots throbbing
under their icy coat, scintillating,
a thousand suns
opening a dam of flowing memories
of sunnier shores
promises of blossoms to come
until suddenly, as if pulsated by an engine,
statuesque, the migrant bird deploys gigantic
wings, disappears through the dead branches.
(First published by Come Together: Imagine Peace Anthology
From Tea in Heliopolis)
THE APPLE OF GRANADA
Some say Eve handed a pomegranate to Adam, and it makes sense to me. How can the flesh of an apple compare to the bejeweled juicy garnets, the color of passion, hidden under its elastic pink skin tight as an undersized glove, a fruit withholding the power to doom and exile since the dawn of time. For a few irresistible seeds, didn’t Persephone lose sight of the sun for months? I mean, think of the mystery hidden in its slippery gems, of the sweetness of the tongue sealing the union with the beloved in the Song of Songs. And I succumb, despite how messy it is to crack the fruits open, invade that hive, oblivious to the indelible droplets splattering the sink, reaching beyond the marble counter all over my arms and face, as my fingertips delicately remove its inner membranes, until the bowl is filled with shiny ruby red arils. I add a few drops of rose and orange blossom water, the way my mother did, and my grandmother used to do, and her mother before her.
(First published by Cumberland River Review
From Under Brushstrokes)
HOKUSAI’S THE GREAT WAVE
in wake of Fukushima, 2011
It is said Hokusai never intended to represent
a tsunami, but an okinami, a wave of the open sea,
erect, foam curling up its claw-crested fingers
over stunned boatmen surfing in reverence.
And I wonder what made that captive wave leap
out, release the dormant creature locked in
for centuries in shades of Prussian blue,
its delicate swirls spewing muddy torrents
over Fukushima’s shores, erasing in black ink
all shapes ever drawn, engraved or breathing,
its voracious appetite growing in silence, its heart
melting blackness into the heart of nuclear reactors.
What made it erupt like a maddened volcano
famished for blood, steel teeth crushing tiles, wood,
metal, belching in a roar engulfing homes, cars,
boats, buses, men, women, children, newborn,
unborn, all swept like broken twigs and fallen leaves,
carrying seeds that will not grow for seasons to come.
The wave of the open sea now speaks in tongues,
each curve, a threat, its filigree lines and blue hues
seem steeped in lethal pigments. In the print’s empty
spaces, spirits hold their breath, dotted droplets
filled with suffocated, inaudible voices, whisper:
Remember me, I no longer have this beautiful skin.
Remember the light that came out of my eyes.
Remember my story never to be told.
Remember my smile, my hands, my dreams.
Hokusai, your okinami has lost its innocence.
(First published by Sunrise from Blue Thunder: Japan Anthology
From Under Brushstrokes)
THE TASTE OF THE EARTH
Two fawns cross the creek. One of them pauses, linked
to his mirror reflection by the tip of his tongue, parallel
worlds merge on the fault line of a folded image.
A musical phrase sticks to your skin, the wind espouses
ripples, liquid dunes lick the shoreline, give moisture to
wild brush, blown-over seeds and thoughts.
Iridescent hummingbirds hover over purple iris blooms.
The shore is faithful to the stream’s first touch. Like first
love, it nourishes tendrils rising into a green flame,
never forgotten like the taste of the earth. A desert thirsts
for an oasis, a fawn melts into the music of a fable,
a gazelle, new memories map rhizomes twisting,
anchoring us farther with each shoot spreading from our
birthplace to everywhere we’ve lived, to where we live
now, and does it make a difference if the root remembers?
(First published by Sukoon Literary Journal
From The Taste of the Earth)
THE HOUSE OF ALEPPO THAT I WOULD NEVER GO TO SEE
My father’s ancestral home haunted me for years
like the mirage of an oasis that kept receding in my mind
I’ve lived in this house through stories told
by my grandmothers in Heliopolis, and
yellowed photographs bearing handwritten
notes. A dream stored in a drawer: year
after year, whenever in Lebanon, we’d say,
next time, we’ll make it to Aleppo!
I will never sit in the internal courtyard, by
the marble fountain inlaid with pink stone
and basalt, watch the rise and fall of its
refreshing ferns constantly humming as I
sip my Turkish coffee.
I will never walk over the intricate
geometric designs of the marble floor,
surrounded by climbing jasmine and
rose bushes, lending their pungent scent!
On sleepless nights, I’d visit the wood-paneled
rooms, stare at the wall cabinets’ calligraphic
carvings, letters engraved in gold leaf arabesques,
opening up like petals, each telling a tale…
The story of the secret passage, leading
from the cave to the once imposing Citadel,
offering the possibility of an escape, or
reaching out for supplies, alleviating
the anxiety of living under constant threat.
The story of the cave’s arched chambers, redolent
with ghost smells and fragrances, the large
earthenware jugs pregnant with wine, vinegar or
olive oil, the handmade laurel soap squares, stamped
with an olive tree and stored to age for months.
The story of laurel bar shavings melted for laundry
on the terrace, clothes hanging on ropes basking in
the sun, nearby the open-air stone oven for baking
flat bread, braided Easter brioche and pastry trays.
I think of the wind blowing through immaculate
sheets, shrouding faces, an omen of what was yet
to come, the heat of the oven increasing, increasing,
stone walls crumbling with louder, ever deafening
sounds, and wonder, where did the songbirds go?
(First published by Fifth Wednesday Journal
From The Taste of the Earth)
The High Window 