Poetry by Cheryl Latif

             Bart Everson CC



ash tuesday
            a truncated sestina

cleansed at last of burial ash 
you return to tell of angels falling from the sky
the fire where you lost yourself as day turned to night
in brittle madness
streets brushed with unspeakable dust clouds   embers
burning the city silent 

how your subway car suddenly shuddered silent
the ground above heaving as towers fell to ash.
trapped below, none of you knew. only embers
of wild confusion igniting distrust.    even there, with no sky
you tasted the coming madness
humanity’s dark night.

you helped a pregnant woman to the street like night
joined the tide of muffled footsteps, silent
exodus across the bridge    toward what? this madness
knows no borders.   eyes burning with tears and ash
you walked blind   9am daylight wiped clean from the sky
dawn of a new era hissing like embers.

back turned on a vision once sought, embers
of love swath the night 
like neon in the sky 
rain down in silent
questions: what was true, what was ash.

            on the third anniversary of 9/11





body language

a tart wash of sun streams through the double paned glass
summer’s inconsolable push
like a child’s desire.    a pat   a hush   not nearly enough
to quell fear   want.   
empty echo     early morning reverie. 

‘neath a rising tide of silence   scratch of pen to paper: 
commiseration of ink and sweat about the cost of a single step. 
these vain attempts to dress wounded hours 
expose the frailty of language 
while regret eats through the day like acid. 

this acrid spell    burden of expectation scraped raw
each bend    stretch    a reminder 
simple poetry of sinew and tendon 
lost to the confused grip of past and present
the innate way fate twists meaning. 

what’s unwritten has different value   lessons 
embedded in cells like rings within mighty redwoods
hidden save for the cut of the logger’s saw
— but who could translate    wood to paper
strength to vulnerability

it’s all a foreign language now

​

​*body language first appeared in the 2008 Magee Park Poets Anthology, published by the Carlsbad City Library.

Originally from Southern California, Cheryl Latif emigrated to the Pacific Northwest in 2001 to live under a sky that speaks several languages. Her poetry was first published in Between Sheets, a Cal State Stanislaus literary magazine (1978). She didn’t submit again for some time. Now her work has appeared in a variety of local, regional and national publications such as New Millennium Writings, The Comstock Review, Spillway, How Luminous the Wildflowers, Magee Park Poets and more. 

While in San Diego, she curated/hosted a weekly poetry series in San Diego that featured poets from across the nation and across the pond. 

A copywriter by trade, she relishes fooling with words.

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