Celine Aljamil

recent sprawled out poems coincidentally grappling with the unknown

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Coffee Reading

This poem was published in print with Haven for Artists, as part of the third issue of MANBOUZINE.

Soiled clouds form patterns
I take snapshots of the vastness, to hoard
Mud in my cup, that spills
beyond the porcelain and my finger 

Tips trace a moon that follows us everywhere
It bargains for light from the day before
Cradling in its crescent what it means to be special
Back when we couldn’t spell but casted
wishes in coffee dregs

We share a faucet with the sky
Unhinged it floods
When I grow up, I’ll take enough sips
And it will never fill my cup

Heavy lids, collectors of bitter fate
Blue lips in the desert of our eyes
The wind licks our thumbs
To know which way to go
And spits out the grains of time

1-02-2022

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Something of a Dream

my hopes are in my stomach
the pits of my dreams
where life floats above me
and I revel
realm under
touching light like stars
shooting pain in my chest

the world that succumbs to the pull
of the ground
the tug
of the real
the fleeting that makes you act

the snug in your brain
the promise of body
next to cheek
moon beam from behind the bushes
a reluctance to give in
because of the unsaid

raise your hands up
a surrender to the sands
dunes that suffocate

mist in the lull
mist mist mist damp

12-2021

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Feast on Possibility

Did we meet coincidentally?
Like time placed you in the palm of my hands
I twiddled with possibility
like you could slip away any second
                                                          second
                                                                 second

I don’t believe in destiny
but the world 
Has its way of pushing two bodies to bump
Our grafts mesh together 
I could reject you any second

My
parts and
your
parts
are s    c          a          t           t           e          r           e          d
Floating in a red noodle soup
Indiscernible like the world

I sew threads that surround
Coiled dough that forms meaning
The crevices of the bowl
A phantom path
Where I fiddle in the dark
Like how you would imagine a cloud feels
Do I touch you like cotton candy? 
Or are you mist?

I form a candy necklace
I could nibble at
while I’m waiting for you
my jaw is sore from biting 
I don’t want to let go

I put my hands together
Cradle my mouth
Prayer spat out in tied knots

Fly kites from my throat
A wet letter
That flutters in the sky
Loses itself swung in play
With strings tugged to stay in place

There are too many steps to                                      floss
So we let teeth stain from the red noodle soup
We let teeth rot from the cotton candy
We slide down before they catch our tongue
Purging
To
let
go

03-09-2021

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Destination Unknown

This poem was published with Sumou Magazine, as part of their fifth issue on Shedding Skins.

I’m knitting every thought onto my body
Thickening my skin after all the shedding
Sitting in an hourglass of decay
The grains go through my hands
I remember our time at the beach
Elsewhere, far away from today
15 years ago, to be exact
You sat sheltered under the shade
My body was folding salt
I go back to 20
Nearby the Mediterranean Sea
Here I reek.

Disney princess in the middle east
All the villains live in Beirut;
they lure you with red apples
Possess you with a genie’s bottle.
Do you know what we do with empty bottles?
We fill them with letters and send them out to sea
Each letter migrates far away,
You don’t hear back.

The shade
Mama is the queen of the electric light-up floor;
Covered all the songs, swiftly danced through every level.
She sits in the shade at the beach now
Far away from the waves, the groove.
I feel the beat in my toes
Sitting next to the ocean too close
I’m engulfed by the rhythm
My body sweats in purgatory
The screen counts down in front of me
1,2,3, the music starts. Round 1.

Teta’s embroidery
Teta knits until her wrists hurt.
She knows all my cousins’ sizes
I tried to mimic the turn of her hands
The accuracy of her fingers
Going through one loop after the other
I have her thick skin
She pricked her finger times and times before
Growing numb, growing resilient
These patterns are all she knows
So, she dresses us up with her cloth and wool
And we sweat in this heat.
The scarf will feel snug once I’m in Europe.

Perfume
Ever used mawared (ماء ورد) to soothe a sunburn?
Teta dabs my red cheeks with it and all of a sudden, the scent drags my nose
I’m littered with nostalgia that doesn’t belong to me.
Smells stick just like salt does
A mixture of sewage, exhaust, and skin shed
But in that little bottle resting in the kitchen pantry, rose water cleanses me
It dilutes poison

I shake the last drops down, squeeze the petals

pat my cheeks and know it’s time:
When the bottle’s empty, we send it out to sea…

03-07-2020