EVEN MALEFICENT

I hold my face in my two hands,
 and the rest of me falls apart.

So I hold my feet in my two hands,

 and now I am on the floor.

Oh not this again, 

me longing to fly.

Searching for wings, 

 I find torn flesh, 

this too, ripped,

 by two hands.

Nameless men, named men. 

 Even Maleficent 

took lifetimes of loneliness, 

to find her wings again. 

© Shaista Tayabali

at DVerse Poets

image from Allure magazine

ICARUS IN REVERSE

I want to be impressive 

and say I met a mountain once,

or a pyramid, or the desert -

but the truth is the sea scares me 

and the only landscape I know 

lies beneath me; 

my bed. My panicked heart. 

I iron over my panicked heart,

flat as sheets of hair

you can buy these days, and

attach, like a doll’s accessory 

to your own bemused scalp -

whose stories have crossed rivers 

you’ll never know.

Be sure there was sadness there,

you’ll never know.

No one parts with their hair 

when it ripples freely; freedom 

was paid in the sacrifice. Who

pockets the coins of gold

in the temples of our prayers?

The first women who wrote poetry 

were nuns, some say. But the 

first woman was earth, was sea,

was fire flooding air, is still

every tree. I want to be impressive?

Why? Every tiny seed is me.

The sorrow is I forget my wings 

and falling, fail to rescue me. 

(Images: via Lucy Campbell art on instagram After Bruegel, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels)

Participating in DVerse Poets Open Link night 

PALINODE TO FLIGHT

‘New Year met me somewhat sad,

Old year leaves me tired’ - Christina Rossetti

Bird on a wire.

Bird on a tree.

I see you.

Do you see me?

Blink and I’ll miss you.

Squint and you’ll see me.

I, in a taxi, unable to drive.

You, wingèd beastie, fly. 

Fly!

Down among the chimneys,

we burn and kill each other.

Friendly slaughterhouse,

we marry and charm each other.

Trees grow down here, their 

roots our only saving grace.

Mycelium drip feeds our lungs - 

we live, we breathe; sip by sip, 

we make space. 

© Shaista Tayabali, 2025

This, an attempt at a palinode (a song of opposite ideas, or retraction of opinions) is what I wrote in the taxi on the way to the hospital yesterday for an infusion I missed on Sunday. I slept through Sunday’s infusion appointment time, still so fatigued from the weight of last year. 

In this poem, I begin with height and flight, but also shorter staccato lines, and then it takes a turn, a descent, a swoop down into the mire and murk of being human. I try towards the end to invite the idea of space, which is what birds have in abundance, and what we seem to devour with our selves, our industry and our tech. Trees, as always, save us, both reaching down and reaching up. Trees have no need for palinodes. Except when they are on fire… 

(Images : Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1828-1882)

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