Danusha Laméris

cantfindit

Danusha Laméris was born in 1971 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the author of The Moons of August (Autumn House Press, 2014), selected by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the 2013 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize. She lives in Santa Cruz, California, and teaches writing worskhops. Source

Insha'Allah

I don’t know when it slipped into my speech

that soft word meaning, “if God wills it.”

Insha’Allah I will see you next summer.

The baby will come in spring, insha’Allah.

Insha’Allah this year we will have enough rain.

 

So many plans I’ve laid have unraveled

easily as braids beneath my mother’s quick fingers.

 

Every language must have a word for this. A word

our grandmothers uttered under their breath

as they pinned the whites, soaked in lemon,

hung them to dry in the sun, or peeled potatoes,

dropping the discarded skins into a bowl.

 

Our sons will return next month, insha’Allah.

Insha’Allah this war will end, soon. Insha’Allah

the rice will be enough to last through winter.

 

How lightly we learn to hold hope,

as if it were an animal that could turn around

and bite your hand. And still we carry it

the way a mother would, carefully,

from one day to the next.

Published:

2014

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2021

2023

2024

Themes:

Bilingual

Faith & Hope

Intersectionality & Culture

Literary Devices:

Dialogue

conversation between two or more people as a feature of a book, play, or movie

Extended Metaphor

a metaphor that extends through several lines or even an entire poem

Repetition

a recurrence of the same word or phrase two or more times

Simile

a comparison between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”