Hedy Habra's "Visiting the Generalife"

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Hedy Habra is a poet, artist and essayist. She is the author of three poetry collections from Press 53, most recently, The Taste of the Earth (2019), Winner of the Silver Nautilus Book Award and Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award; Tea in Heliopolis Winner of the Best Book Award and Under Brushstrokes, a Finalist for the Best Book Award and the International Book Award. Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American Book Award’s Honorable Mention and was Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. She is a seventeen-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the net.https://www.hedyhabra.com/


I linger along the rose orchard cooled by water fountains. A suspension of iridescent droplets rises and falls in splashing loops, trickles through inlaid channels. Here, air speaks with caressing syllables and fragrant language; each lemon tree heavy with golden globes, its crisp shiny leaf ready to break under my fingers’ slightest touch, oozes essential oils. Each rose speaks of the harvest of rose petals and orange blossoms my mother distilled in alembics in the vast white-tiled bathroom, the transparent essence imprisoned in a row of bottles stored in the sandara, that secret room above the kitchen, hosting a microcosm of flavors gathered from far away plantations and mountain slopes.


Boabdil’s heart shrunk

eyes fixed at the Alhambra

a fragile star falls


© 2022 Hedy Habra


First published by Mizna Literary Journal (2014)

From The Taste of the Earth (Press 53 2019)

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