Here are the final drafts of my poems:
Phase 1: A Sort-of American Child
Tapestry: Horsetooth Sunset
The Colorado foothills frame her childhood
They always lingered like a painting in the distance,
A compass anchoring west, pulling her to them,
Horsetooth pointing at the sky,
A rock that seems too square and bare within the rolling peaks
She was born here- in Fort Collins
A little girl with a foreign name that appeared
As the publisher on encyclopedias
The kids in her class,
The Sams, Taylors, Annas
Didn’t quite know what to make of the
Name that was not spelled as it was pronounced
By their English tongues
The teacher that had to be corrected every week in second grade
Led the girl to eventually answer to this name that was not hers,
As she told herself it was not so bad
She was goofy and gullible and perhaps
Not as “American”
As the classmates who celebrated the holidays
They did crafts for in class,
The green layers of her paper Christmas tree and
Carol singing so familiar for something she
Was not taught to believe in
Her father baked baklava that she brought to school,
And it was often that people would ask her for them
They were like magic- all of a sudden they noticed her
Sitting in the corner
As they held those pastry swirls,
Green pistachios in filo shells
Sticky in their hands from the carameled-sugar coating
A delicacy of her people
Back in Syria
She liked showing off
When classmates were impressed
With her knowledge of Arabic
She’d say tree and book and water
And they’d say it back
Struggling over throaty consonants
Most of the time though,
She just did her best to fit in
She sang those carols and corrected her name and went to their parties
And she hoped that perhaps, just perhaps, they would not notice-
She was different
The oranges and pinks that dipped down to those peaks
During summer sunsets-
She saw them on the way to the Friday night prayers
And she said lookto her family and pointed
As they drove through familiar neighborhood streets lined in pointed wood houses
And she watched, engrossed as the colors deepened, changed, darkened
Into the lid of night
Phase 2: In Syria
Tapestry: Entrance to Citadel
Aleppo walls rich in sandy browns speckle the rooftop view from the Citadel
Until they blur and fade into the foggy heat in the distance
The mosque’s spires reach over the rest
The green domes harmonizing with the treetops intermittent in the
Sharp angles of boxy buildings
She loved this view-
This new place that glimmered bronze in her mind
Today’s heat was not so intense and the bustling city
Was no longer harsh on her small-town ears
This old building was part of her history, her last name,
The people she had just come to know
And as Arabic rolled off the tongues
Of the cousins who stood behind her
She wondered at who it was
That brought her to be in this place
Perhaps her family line had worked here
Some long time ago when the arrow slits were used
To fend off enemy armies approaching the fortress
She ran her hands over the ancient stone
It would tell her what she had never known:
There was so much more,
She had a history she belonged to
Not one where she floated alone in a deep sea
The way it had felt back in America
as the child of immigrants
She had a people she was not severed from
Together they pressed date cookies into molds,
And wrapped grape leaves into rolls stuffed with rice
Entering the gaping arch of this fortress
Had felt like crossing realms
Where time and space blurred with the past
And she was but a dust fleck in the span of history
This new home, this place enveloped her
in the possibilities of who she could be
A return to a place she hadn’t known she needed to see
A new belonging that welcomed her like an old friend
She didn’t stand out so much anymore
The people here knew how to say her name and
They warmly hugged her like they had known her her whole life
And her world expanded to include these new hundreds of relatives
And she instantly loved them as one only does with those who share your blood
Her Arabic was not quite fluent enough,
To express all she had to say to these people, the city,
These floors that carried the weight of her history
Up here the air was clear of the stench of cigarettes-
But even that had garnered her fondness
The Athan rings from five mosques at once,
The call to prayer’s echoes reach even this rooftop
Sound waves weaving together and repeating each other
There was no sound so engulfing, so mesmerizing as this
And it felt as familiar as running her fingers over fraying prayer beads
When it suddenly stopped she instantly missed the embrace of those voices
This city held stories she had yet to discover
And memories like myths to her American self-
And she did not know how she could possibly leave it all behind
Phase 3: The Embracing of Both
Tapestry: Snow Covered Cul-de-sac
Who knew that Aleppo blood would be walking through an old Colorado town
Wrapped in black gloves and grey jacket,
Feet encased in fur lined boots-
It might be snowing, or just the wind
blowing snow off crabapple trees
A chill lurks over undisturbed white
brushing against her fabric shell
night clouds glowing orange, snow blurring the mountain frame
Arms like a gradient of warmth from fingertips to shoulder blades
The roofs and trees trimmed in bulbs of the other houses of
that cul-de-sac where she rode her scooter round and round
sit patiently beneath that blanket,
her own home bare of Christmas cheer
At odd with house that is the view she sees from her window every morning
With orange paint and maroon window panes
Back in Syria, white has only covered the streets once
maybe twice in their memory
and though they are no strangers to the cold
Aleppo tans become dulled in the frigid winter air
Here, she feels like a translator bridging worlds
The point in an angle where two lines meet
Standing in the snow with a headscarf
Challenging them to ask,
To understand her Syria
That it can fit into this western world
Like the slices of a mosaic box
She wants to share it,
Wants them to know about the tragedies
Of her people
And the richness of her history
They can learn if they will only look
In that coated silence,
Thick like a heaping mound of white rice
Aleppo blood relished that moment of stillness
Where the world stopped and nature didn’t mind
Who she was or where she came from
Here is the final tapestry for my second poem
I also have the reference images for my other two tapestries here:
