Pedernal

You're the temple of our Aztlan
a longitudinal misfit
like the estranged, and sometimes strange
who orbit your shadow
I lose alignment in your symmetry
in the black lace of a woman
who too survived 1000 molten deaths
your snow streaked hair visible to those
with you in the early light
do they know that underneath your seasons
the fires that cast you as Juliet's breast
still burn at puberty's rim
pushing orchids and trumpet flowers
through the ash of your lovers
gathering loamy clouds to listen
to the new stories simmering in your skin
our dark goddess
standing square in a strange brew
black brush on mosque skies
steady against the frenzy of lights
Pedernal, they are kinder
to your red and yellow-haired sisters
but you and I know the truth
whichever temple they built to mask
their devotion.


Yasmeen Najmi


Cerro or Mt. Pedernal is located near Abiquiu, New Mexico

Gulf Ghazal

One evening I was listening to the public radio recordings of a Louisiana native and naturalist who mentioned the concept of a "thin place," which he defined as a physical place on the landscape where the veil between this world and next is thin - a place you understand intuitively. I so liked the concept/words that I wrote a poem around it. May we all find a thin place(s) in this world.


On dry stripes between the feral bayous and rivers, they came to build, grow in thin places. Life delivered in ritual tides, geologic gifts that oozed between plank floor toes, thin places.

The ashy, skirted frames of bald cypress and tupelo gum slumped like old women, dripped in antebellum lace of moss that filled dikes of sunlight, closed the thin places.

A fiery sun thundered to sky, eclipsed dark, earth's blood crept to shore staining, straining shells, wings, the sickled marsh grass - settled in all those thin places.

Thinking it was night again, eels left their watery nests among the breathing roots that held the world together, darting, twisting in the flow through thin places.

Fisherman, the anointed soldiers of Goddess Yemanja, pried the paralyzed from gluey graves, wound new levees like chastity belts around shores, dark clouds and truth spun below thin places.

Old Joe at Boutte's Bayou smiled, "Sorry, all I can fix you now is a beef po'boy sandwich. Cleanin' the oil is like gettin' gum off yo shoe," he cackled, missing teeth showed roux thin places.

His mouth slowly waned, eyes fixed in a distant, smoky glaze, he said "Yasmeen, the people in Lafitte or Theriot or anywhere round here, in these prowling bayous we know our thin places."


Yasmeen Najmi


Published in Fixed and Free Anthology of New Mexico Poets, 2012. All rights reserved (Yemanja is a mother goddess in the Yoruban tradition. She represents water - mud, swamps and ocean).

Lost in Translation

Power lies in determined translation
of the tangled synapses
of costumed memories
filed as "unknown:"
emergent headstones.

Stationed in the headlight,
the whistle warns approach
is the engine love or fear?
Dopplered heartbeats deafen
the answer
we load thoughts into chambers
click...click...click
tongue quivers like a teapot door
hinting the sonic landscape
and, in a moment,
the mind's valve flies open to sing
exposing, bathing us in the white
rays of a smile
opening pores to light
or, in storm cold shot
slams shut
blood dives to reef
fear is the fighting fish
that picks the bones,
refracting love
pigmenting rage
power not exercised
love not exiled
by the bullet or fist
only a word.

Yasmeen Najmi