The Sounding Heart

By Siham Karami

The sounding heart begins in awe,

How vast and intimate it saw

The universe an inner ear

To be with God forever near.

But in our chests we creak and yaw

 

Through lulling waves, and storms that gnaw

Our days on deck, belabored, raw.

We let the ocean numb and shear

The sounding heart

 

Until the jolt! The lurching jaw—

Your words caught muffled in the craw

Worlds beneath your frail veneer.

Deep in the hold, alone, you hear

The throbbing pulse, Allah…Allah…—

The sounding heart.

 

Siham Karami co-owns a technology recycling company and lives in Florida. Her poetry appears or will appear in The Comstock Review, Measure, Right Hand Pointing, The Rotary Dial, Atavic Poetry, Unsplendid, Möbius, String Poet, The Centrifugal Eye, Mezzo Cammin, Angle Poetry, Kin Poetry Journal, Wordgathering, Loch Raven Review, Raintown Review, Innisfree Journal, and  other journals and anthologies. Winner of a Laureates’ Choice prize in the Maria W. Faust sonnet contest and a Pushcart Prize nominee, she blogs at sihamkarami.wordpress.com, where she posts occasional book reviews.