Tamer Mostafa




Tamer Mostafa is the recipient of the 2013 Lois Ann Latinn Rosenberg Award for Poetry and the First Place Prize in Undergraduate Creative Non-Fiction from the 2011 Bazzanella Literary Awards. He is a Stockton, California native whose works have been included in The Rag, California Quarterly, Poets Espresso, No Infinite, and Confrontation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life and Death


On a lawn chair next to a pool in spring

I am half asleep in a semi reclined

position, able to make out the leafless

tree branches overhead, through the columns

of lashes, blurred and bigger than normal.

A squiggled orange line twitches and jumps,

wanting to squeeze through the slit of fresh air.



Opening my eyes to the fullest extent,

my wife floats face down under the water

letting the little tides carry her body

further and further towards the deep end.

Feeling the depth, she paddles to the shallow end,

brushes the chlorine soaked hair away from her face.










 

Initiation


One night, I visited a mechanic’s shop

with a brick and a black ski mask

to recoup my losses from a flawed job.


After driving the road back and forth

to affirm the streets would be clear

for the time being, I turned into the entrance

exited my vehicle with the engine running,

chucked the light weight of the brick

to the poorly printed logo on the glass.


Taking rapid breaths as if my life

depended on holding stale air

in my lungs for a prolonged amount of time,

I climbed through the opening

thinking I’d be frightened

by the sound of an alarm,

but was surprised as to how

flawlessly I fit in,

how easy it was to peel the mask off

like it was a dead layer of skin,

flaked and dry near the edges.



I turned my back to the porcelain Buddha,

picking the brick from a pile of receipts

and began striking the register

across the oil-smudged keys,

hoping that after multiple hits,

the machine would feel pain,

reach a point of fatigue,

vomit its remnants of the day

into my scratched hands.



Unwilling to comply and too heavy to drag out,

I shielded the brick under my driver’s seat,

kept the speed to the legal limit believing

that any passing authorities would think

I was trying to find my way home.                                                                                                       

 

 

 

 

I Am Afraid of Living



Laying in a damp bed

next to a purifier circulating

the air for particles to trap,

I stay silent, waiting

for the crackle of a train’s sound

to form.

I imagine the friction

transferring heat from the wheels

to the rails to the dry fields.

Perhaps it distracts me from the creek

of a worn down turbine vent

working to spin in the wind.