A journal of art + literature engaging with nature, culture, the environment & ecology

Two poems by Brittany Nohra

Brittany Nohra, Ireland-USA-Lebanon

 

Habitat Loss 

 

I want to know

where the wild 

poppies have gone.

 

Pepper scented

Cyclamen

 

and purple irises

with metallic petals

 

dark as the ruby 

glinting in Astarte’s navel.

 

Lebanese Violet

as I dreamt it

 

was a veil of petals 

in the hair 

 

of your pilgrims. 

 

I stand in what’s left

1. scrub

2. clefts of ruins

3. barest earth. 

Wild Lebanese Iris 

Tissue paper skin

and violet origami heads

coaxed open by sunset

 

their powdery veins 

dust the purple night 

of a field of skulls.

 

Their leaves stretch 

from a grave of grass

at the highest altitude

 

rooted between cedar and rock.

Blooming 

in May

to remain barren

 

there are few bees 

left to squeeze through 

fading mouths.

 

Brittany Nohra is an American-Lebanese poet and conservationist living in the South-West of Ireland. Her work has been published in The Ogham Stone and The Stony Thursday Poetry Book.

Wildness, still alive

Two poems by Chrystal Ho