Lullaby
Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
— Virginia Woolf
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ISSUE THREE
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POETRY
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Lullaby
by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
We cannot carry you,
our arms warm and dry
too late at the shore
of what has cradle-fallen
what sent a woman who fears the sea
what sent a man who fears
the burning skies of his country
into the razor-edged waves.
tiny boat capsized,
upturned fish floating
in the glass bowl of our screens.
We cannot carry you.
We sink deeper, beyond
the midnight zone.
How to measure the trenches
of our silence, little one?
We want things smaller than we know.
A vessel strong enough
to lift you into tomorrow,
a life jacket or two,
a pair of small of shoes
pressing into the sand.
LENA Khalaf TUFFAHA ’s poems have most recently been published or are forthcoming from journals including Lunch Ticket, The Boiler, Borderlands Texas Review, Broadsided Press, Blackbird, Mizna, The Lake for Poetry and Sukoon . This year, two of her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her first collection of poems, Water & Salt , will be published by Red Hen Press in Spring 2017. She is an MFA candidate at the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University.
The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.
—Cervantes, Don Quixote
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ABOUT ISSUE THREE FICTION POETRY WORKSHOP SUBMIT