Lisa Suhair Majaj Quotes

Today his words surround me
with the quiet intensity of growing things,
roots planted a long time ago
lacing the distances of my heart.

Bless poetry books that cross oceans
in battered envelopes,
bearing small flames of words.

hopes
for peace: hand clasped in hand
firmer than fist on a gun
or club, hand raised in greeting
stronger than hand raised for violence

till the moon rises,
the night opens,
and all the stars shine out.

I find inspiration in anything that sparks attention and emotion and associations—an object, a news article, a natural scene, a sound, an odor. Going for walks sharpens my awareness as well as freeing my mind to wander. I think losing my parents so early, and keeping so many mementos from them around me in my daily life, helped shape my understanding of how meaning is embedded in the simplest of things. I use potholders my mother crocheted, keep my dad’s paperweight on my desk, and think of them daily.

consider a delicate porcelain bowl
how it crushes under a single blow-
in one moment whole years disappear

See how we save even the broken bits of pottery,
fitting fragments together
along jagged lines to remember you

These words are the weight
cupped in our palms:
the small broken note of freedom.

Remember the splintered staccato
of bullets against rock, the way dust rose
in the stunned aftershock of silence?

My writing process is generally a bit haphazard. I carry notebooks around to capture ideas, observations, phrases, images, chunks of freewriting. I shift to the computer to do more substantive writing and work on craft issues. I always generate multiple drafts of pieces (keeping all drafts in a separate folder), and often experiment with form in different versions to see what fits the text best.

ground resilient beneath our feet, sky
glimmering
between branches of trees older than any of us.

The sun will rise again tomorrow,
vigilant and weary as hope.

Now we walk out into the tunnel of days
and a million memories rustle

Once she could have held anything steady
and safe: a glass of tea, her brother's baby.
Now her hands shake at the weight of a fork.

Did my parents know
that what they planted,
roots against the drought,
would survive?