Poetry by Celina Naheed

​Thomas Wensing CC



​
Broken Mint:

I. never
One day the mint will dry, breaking over this soil from which the softest flowers bloom, but only if they are given enough. The bees have never known what to make of it, but their wings hold on nonetheless. This is where their wings break into silver flakes becoming stars sewed to the ground. I can drink the pollen to heal my silver scars but I never have, I never wanted to.


iii. still
I can stick my tongue in the soft moss when my throat has swallowed briars and I wish to sing again. Craving sugar to sweeten my touch I could stain my lips with lost mulberries. I could stop the river from drifting in the wrong direction turning from broken shards of azure to lost clumps of sticky oil by simply letting my foot birth ripples. When water is impure, I can be the rain, my skin a fragment of the sky. But I still don’t want to.

iii. someday
It is simple to carry yourself to the mint every day, almost as simple as it is to stare at the splintering stems breathing buds of fresh oil, clear. I could watch the softest flowers bloom. I could let my hair weave into the roots of dying briars snapping the thorns, the scars lifting from my skin, as I hold them in their last day of violence. I could chew the leaves letting them settle in my stomach vines dripping from my lips my words leaving with them. My tears could be plump and dripping, letting the water touch our lips again. I haven't done any of it yet, but someday I will want to.





only here

only here does the sun loves to cook our streets while we sit in cars with the ac exhaling and a radio tweaked to 985 summer hits murmuring under its breath jealous it cannot speak while we lay in reclining car seats our backs parallel to the ground i turn my head and look at a stain on the arm rest were a strawberry starburst was left out naked to drip were all ignoring it heads in each others laps on days filled with golden light and a rusty ice cream truck that still takes quarters i drape my sticky arms with a layer of sweat that rests on top of freckling skin across my eyes while i pretend that my lips dont want  sugar on lemons sugar on the tart blackberries that are bursting in our yard breaking on the vine only here does the sun cook for us even though it shouldnt we pretend that the heat is a secret that we dont sleep in our underwear our watermelon isnt becoming ice the freezer isnt melting and our hair isnt changing from an oil spill to the roots of trees drying in the sun only here do leaves die early burning on their branches but i know  were gonna run across roads in hazy heat waves to sit in speckled sun-spotted shade anyway chewing grass with brothers spitting in the streets on broken asphalt to watch it sizzle in the same place he split his knee right where i can see him just so i can yell in the name of spreading saliva and wasting water then i can feel the comfort `that it  is only here in this heat we have a purpose




​Celina Naheed is an Iranian American poet who has lived in Georgia for the majority of her life. She is the founding editor of her school’s literary magazine, has received awards for her poetry, and participated in the University of Iowa’s Between the Lines writing program.