Today, you bought new lipstick. You ate
dark chocolate, listened to a friend
rage about marriage. You saw a newborn
in a stroller & weren’t moved. You’re relieved
your children’s legs don’t wrap around your hips
anymore, they click their seat belts into place
by themselves. Your older daughter
just turned 10 & is learning
to send you messages like
“Keep Calm & Love Mama.”
She imitated your dance moves in the car.
This made you feel a little immortal.
The lipstick you bought is called Plum.
It smells good. You’re learning to love bolder
colors on your lips: red, mauve, fuchsia. You want
to go out one day & buy green lipstick.
There should be lipstick called “To Go Out One Day
& Buy Green Lipstick” or “I Rant About Marriage
With My Girlfriends & Laugh” or
“I Will Party Tonight” or
“Because Life Is Too Short.” Except today life felt long
enough for you to go
through your old makeup. You gave your daughter the lipsticks she’d broken
& told her not to touch the new ones. You threatened,
she nodded & smiled at her gift. Life was long enough
for you to go out before sunset because you needed
tomatoes & the hypnotic light at that time of the day.
You only remembered the tomatoes when you opened the fridge
& only remembered the beautiful light when
you drove through it. The world took slower breaths
& you loved it, the way you love your children with an ache
when they’re sleeping, when the quiet
makes you long for the voices
you’d silenced in the afternoon.
Or the way you whisper to your husband
in his sleep that you miss him, ask him
to remember the words in the morning,
& he doesn’t. You talk about marriage.
“Only a piece of paper,” he says,
& what he means is, “Don’t be afraid.
Us is still here inside all this.”
Who remembers anything in the morning daze?
Today you woke up anticipating the hours,
smiling in bed like a child excited about
a trip to the beach. Surprised, you asked,
“What is it, again, that I’m happy about?”
Slowly, you conjured the house
the real estate agent showed you:
empty, spacious, full of sun & dust.
Perhaps you were moved when you saw
the child. Perhaps you’re saying you don’t regret
not having the one that had started inside you
in December. You took the pills. You bled. You cried.
You want an empty uterus, & to dance.
You want arms strong enough to lift
this weight & the new house.
When asked to put “from” in a
sentence,
your daughter wrote, “I am
from my mother.”
You’ve decided you are
country enough.
The night begins. An airplane blinks in the distance.
The old & new loves wait at airports, in homes, on street curbs.
You will wear your new lipstick. Call it
“Look at Us, All Want & Tongue.”
Your husband will not stand still
for a photo. You will rise when
a favorite song comes.
Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet. Her third full-length poetry collection, O, was published by Penguin Books in July 2022. Her collection Louder than Hearts won the 2016 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize. She’s also the author of 3arabi Song, winner of the 2016 Rattle Chapbook prize; There Was and How Much There Was, a 2016 Laureate’s Choice selected by Carol Ann Duffy; and To Live in Autumn, winner of the 2013 Backwaters Prize. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, The New York Times, Poetry, Ploughshares, World Literature Today, the Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. Educated in Arabic, English, and French, Zeina has a BA and an MA in English Literature from the American University of Beirut. Zeina’s invented The Duet, a bilingual poetic form where English and Arabic exist separately and in relationship to each other. Her poem “Maqam” won Poetry Magazine’s 2017 Frederick Bock Prize. She’s the co-creator and co-host, with poet Farah Chamma, of Maqsouda, a podcast about Arabic poetry. After a lifetime in Lebanon and a decade in Dubai, Zeina recently moved to California.
From O by Zeina Hashem Beck, published on July 5, 2022 by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2022 by Zeina Hashem Beck.
Zeina Hashem Beck’s latest book is O (Penguin Books, 2022). Visit with her and her work at the Miami Book Fair 2022on 11/20 at 3:30 in Room 6100. Cover art by: Penguin Books.
Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s preview coverage of Miami Book Fair (MBF) 2021! The poets whose work you’ll be reading every weekday from October 25 through November 12 are just a few of the many authors from around the world participating in this year’s MBF, the nation’s largest gathering of writers and readers of all ages. They all look forward to sharing their work, thoughts, and ideas both in person and online. Between November 14 and November 21, new poet conversations and readings will be launched and available for free on miamibookfaironline.com (in addition to other content). For more information, visit the website and follow MBF on Instagram and Twitter at @miamibookfair and use the hashtag #miamibookfair2021.