Naomi Shihab Nye
Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1952. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and Nye spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. Nye is also considered one of the leading female poets of the American Southwest. She writes her poetry based on experience as an Arab-AMerican. Nye received her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas and continues to live and work in the city.
I like her poems because she doesn’t only mainly write about just one thing, she switches them around. I related to her because of her nationalities and where she comes from. Being the foreign that we are, we experience different things then the rest, Like the poem “Blood” she wrote "A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hand,", I relate a lot with that poem because I’ve seen it happen before and it’s very true. “True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways.” this is so common with me because I have been told and experienced so many ways things we eat or use at on a daily bases could solve so many solutions. My poem “African seems to be a home” was influenced by Naomi Shihab Nye, she inspired me to more open About who I am, because who I am Is what I will be till I die nothing could change it.
Title: Blood.
"A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,"
my father would say. And he'd prove it,
cupping the buzzer instantly
while the host with the swatter started.
In the spring our palms peeled like snakes.
True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways.
I changed these to fit the occasion.
Years before, a girl knocked,
wanted to see the Arab.
I said we didn't have one.
After that, my father told me who he was,
"Shihab"--"shooting star"--
a good name, borrowed from the sky.
Once I said, "When we die, we give it back?"
He said that's what a true Arab would say.
Today the headlines clot in my blood.
A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page.
Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root
is too big for us. What flag can we wave?
I wave the flag of stone and seed,
table mat stitched in blue.
I call my father, we talk around the news.
It is too much for him,
neither of his two languages can reach it.
I drive into the country to find sheep, cows,
to plead with the air:
Who calls anyone civilized?
Where can the crying heart graze?
What does a true Arab do now?
Arabs in Finland.
Their language rolls out,
soft carpet in front of them.
Strolling slowly beneath trees,
men in white shirts,
belts, baggy trousers,
women in scarves,
glinting cigarettes in the dusk.
What they left to be here, in the cold country,
where winter lasts forever,
haunts them in the dark -
golden hue of souk in sunlight,
gentle calling through streets that said, brother,
sit with me a minute, on the small stool
with the steaming glass of tea. Sit with me.
We belong together.
Two Counties.
Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.
Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.
I like her poems because she doesn’t only mainly write about just one thing, she switches them around. I related to her because of her nationalities and where she comes from. Being the foreign that we are, we experience different things then the rest, Like the poem “Blood” she wrote "A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hand,", I relate a lot with that poem because I’ve seen it happen before and it’s very true. “True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways.” this is so common with me because I have been told and experienced so many ways things we eat or use at on a daily bases could solve so many solutions. My poem “African seems to be a home” was influenced by Naomi Shihab Nye, she inspired me to more open About who I am, because who I am Is what I will be till I die nothing could change it.
Title: Blood.
"A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,"
my father would say. And he'd prove it,
cupping the buzzer instantly
while the host with the swatter started.
In the spring our palms peeled like snakes.
True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways.
I changed these to fit the occasion.
Years before, a girl knocked,
wanted to see the Arab.
I said we didn't have one.
After that, my father told me who he was,
"Shihab"--"shooting star"--
a good name, borrowed from the sky.
Once I said, "When we die, we give it back?"
He said that's what a true Arab would say.
Today the headlines clot in my blood.
A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page.
Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root
is too big for us. What flag can we wave?
I wave the flag of stone and seed,
table mat stitched in blue.
I call my father, we talk around the news.
It is too much for him,
neither of his two languages can reach it.
I drive into the country to find sheep, cows,
to plead with the air:
Who calls anyone civilized?
Where can the crying heart graze?
What does a true Arab do now?
Arabs in Finland.
Their language rolls out,
soft carpet in front of them.
Strolling slowly beneath trees,
men in white shirts,
belts, baggy trousers,
women in scarves,
glinting cigarettes in the dusk.
What they left to be here, in the cold country,
where winter lasts forever,
haunts them in the dark -
golden hue of souk in sunlight,
gentle calling through streets that said, brother,
sit with me a minute, on the small stool
with the steaming glass of tea. Sit with me.
We belong together.
Two Counties.
Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.
Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.