Portside

A Syrian Epic

By Muhammad Umar J. Salimi

Her husband wears the ocean

around his neck in penance for

letting go of their son who drowned

and later washed up on a Turkish beach.

She carries flowers on her breasts,

not the seasonal kinds

for bees to settle and pollinate,

but enduring grey ones

carved on graves.

Their daughter wears the last evening

she sat outside with her baby brother

before contrails tore the sky from above

and grey plumes rose

from the ground to bring it down.

Her family has carried storms

and evenings like the old gods,

and like them they’ll be subjects

of paintings and poems —

to be auctioned in evening fund raisers

and read aloud in ivory towers.

Muhammad Umar J. Salimi is a Pakistani-American Muslim poet living in San Francisco. He likes to collects verses washed up on the shores of Ocean Beach and admires stanzas hanging from the redwoods in Muir woods during the weekends.