KINGSFOIL

What if
Poems dueled to capture rainbow deeds
Thrust into the sunlight athelas weeds
Until their marvels became known?

What if
If in the end all writing were a quest
For the intricate velvet ice cream taste
For the other name of the rose that best
Carries forth a smell as sweet, for a waste
Of space to come into its own?

Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, a teacher of French as a foreign language and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Petrichor, Remembered Arts, Rigorous, Lunate, With Painted Words, The Dawntreader and a number of other literary magazines. Studying life, languages and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her.