“Zoom In-Out-In and Cry” by Hibah Shakhez

Earth o’ mine green red brown and blue,

They ask me which colour you are

And laugh when I cannot answer.

Could I lie you were one all through?

But from your green sparkles the rose,

That coy inveterate dancer;

And the blue cusp of the sky, true

To its word, thaws to white, then brown

Gasps out a purple cloud-prancer

That’s carrement inattendu

By the sky’s choleric orange

In the arms of its cloud-lancer.

Earth o’ mine green red brown and blue,

They ask me which colour you are

And laugh when I cannot answer.


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 Wellington Street Review, Black Bough, Nine Muses, Borrowed Solace, Ligeia, Cordite Poetry, 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.

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