By Noeme Grace C. Tabor-Farjani
Only euphemisms emerge
As you try to squeeze metaphors
Out of the lump
Of your sticky existence.
Schedule is sticky,
And you dump him
A remark out of a glutinous topic
You cannot dissect.
Religion is the mother
Of all self-righteous judgments.
Sticky. The rice hardened
On the dirty plate. Sticky.
Exhale your impatience
On dish soap suds.
Squeal “I am okay!”
After a loud brushing
Of ceramic against
A stainless dryer.
Okay matched
With stiffened jaw
And slight squeezing of chest
Because: the chores and kids
And an empty ATM card
And blank white pages wait
For three thousand words,
Are enough work you need,
Is a euphemism.
Euphemisms from leftovers
In the fridge, and greens
Turning brown. Euphemisms
Like gourmet that I create
From leftovers. So much
Like my life.
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Noeme Grace C Tabor-Farjani has authored the collection The Gospel of Grace: Poems (forthcoming) and the chapbook Letters from Libya: Memoirs (2018) which chronicled her family’s escape from the Second Libyan Civil War in 2014. Her works have been published in journals and magazines in England, Massachusetts, New Zealand, New York, Australia, Pennsylvania, Singapore, Texas, Ireland, California, Nigeria, and forthcoming from Dreich Press (Scotland) and Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine (Hong Kong). She will also be part of anthologies Hair-Raising (England, UK: Nine Pens Press), Plant People: An Anthology of Environmental Artists (Arkansas, US: Plants & Poetry Journal), and HerMana: A Radical Re-imagining by Womxn Writers (Oregon, US: Regional Arts & Culture Council). A featured author at Indiana-based Heartland Society of Women Writers and GMA Regional TV, she previously taught translation, drama, children’s literature, and other humanities courses at the undergraduate and senior high school levels in Metro Cagayan de Oro in the southern Philippines. In 2018, she defended her PhD dissertation on Flow Theory in creative writing pedagogy.
Find her on Facebook and on her YouTube channel ‘Grace Spills.’ (https://linktr.ee/ngctaborfarjani)
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