The Boundaries of Ancient Salih

By Ibtisam Abujad

“Command-like,” the tented woman knows its deception

When the seas cease to creek, it kidnaps them instead

The floods stop carrying the camels that breach

The boundaries of the ancient Salih

who prevented the young from perishing under the salted typhoon

I heard the stories, but took no shelter under the olive trees

No, I lamented not a second beyond the blowing of the horn

I fear not that green poison which boils the carcasses of the desert ships

 

“Command-like” they call it in nomadic tongue

Of the melting sun its soil is potted

Its leaves crimson the cheeks of young girls at the world’s fold

Its white sap flows, petrifying the arteries of fertile valleys

 

“Life-like,” it whispered, lulling me into a smaller death

A drink from the blue waters reddens your dehydrated lips, whitens your blackened eyes

Meld into its sapphire waters,

Enter the scent of its ivory incense

Rinse your likeness with its demystifying solution

Insert yourself into its baptismal pools, listen not to the sand dweller

Can she help but perish, blinded by the shards from which she was forged

Atrophied by the toxic milk of the she camel

 

She has been tranced by the mirages of the salmon queen  

who knows only the past, who occupies the stony cavern

She breeds allusions, giving birth to muddled characters

who arrange heresy upon hanging tablets

and plot burials beneath the virginal quick sands

 

You must escape into the majesty of the purple mountains

Cross into the heart of the shining sees, it says

Confirm thy soul in self-control away from the sways of desert swells

Let the amber waves mend thine every flaw

 

At once, the winds shed their grace, beckoning me into their liberty

Away from the milky streams, and into the wilderness,

Onto a mare, carving into the sands a maelstrom as it gallops,

“Prince-like”.

 

Ibtisam Abujad is an instructor and doctoral student at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI.