“Taste”

There’s the dewy taste of seas and clouds in the dust,
the taste of the expanse and the rain,
of plains, mountains, humans,
of feminity, love, and intrepid oranges,
of childhood and saffron,
of living in my mother’s heart,
of travel,
and of your soul and mine.
But my beloved trees steal toward the source
to taste it in solitude, before any of us

Ibrahim Nasrallah was born in Amman, Jordan, in 1954, and raised in a refugee camp. After working as a teacher and a journalist, he became vice president of Darat Al-Funoun, Jordan’s most prominent art and cultural center. He has written thirteen poetry collections and eleven novels, as well as works of literary criticism. He is also a painter and a photographer.

Omnia Amin was born in Cairo, Egypt. She is an author, translator, and professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at Zayed University in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Rick London lives and works in San Francisco. His most recent publication is the poetry collection The Materialist (Doorjamb Press, 2008).