The Ofi Press Magazine
International Poetry and Literature from Mexico City
Poems by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha (USA)
Published in The Ofi Press issue 42
Tu’burni
Tu’burni is a common Syrian term of endearment that transliterates “bury me” and means “I love you so much I hope I’m the one that dies first.”
As a child, the syrup of
my grandmother’s lilting sweet-nothings
seemed otherworldly.
Her Syrian phrases stretched wide as an embrace,
jasmine petals bathed in her laughter.
Tu’burni – bury me!
Beloved of my heart
my life and my soul.
When I balked at the dark prayer
wrapped in love’s silks
my mother translated:
Let me be
the one who goes first,
let my heart never live a day without you,
children should bury their elders.
In my grandmother’s old
Damascus neighborhood now
slender shrouds scrubbed
clean of war’s detritus
sleep soundlessly
silhouetted against the stone wall.
The dark prayer,
unanswered,
burns to white ash.
In the homeland of jasmine,
childhood drowned
in a poison with no fragrance.
Middle Village
Once you move away
and eat onions raised in another soil
wash for prayers in soft water flowing
voluptuously from the faucet
with no fear of shortages or disruptions
in the weekly laundry schedule,
you are from the West.
If you learn to drink your morning coffee
form a paper cup on the way to work
as you speed along a velvety stretch of freeway
you are from the West.
It can’t be helped.
There are fewer sunlight hours where you now live.
Perhaps a vitamin D deficiency will explain some of it
to your grandmother who loves you
with such longing until you travel back
then she still loves you
but with the tempered wisdom of one whose children are immigrants.
It can’t be helped.
the bread you now buy turns brittle only moments
after it’s taken out of the bag
and is too thin to soak up the glistening oil she sends you
each year after the harvest’s press.
It can’t be helped.
You stumble through fragments of language with a heavy tongue
searching for words you’d stored in the attic
sorting through what’s been folded away
what fits only like an older sister’s hand-me-downs.
Once you practice a new economy of greetings,
kissing just twice
one tidy peck on each cheek
when you are first to release the embrace
you are from the West.
But once, years away from home
aboard a ferry on the Bosphorous, blue
cradle rocking between sister shores,
the longing nestled deep in your heart
unfurls its dervish robes across the sky.
Suddenly the words you hear five times a day
recorded on your mobile phone
or muttered quickly under your breath
stop you in your tracks
and on the shores of Ortakoy
you find yourself looking East.
About the Poet
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is an Arab American writer of Palestinian, Jordanian and Syrian heritage. She writes poetry as well as essays and literary translations and her poems have been published internationally in print and online journals including Sukoon, Human, The Lake for Poetry, the Monarch Review, and the Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art. In 2014, her poem “Immigrant” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Lena’s first collection of poems is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2018.
Image: "Syrian Boys" by Random House.