Thanks, Hafez by Diana Arterian

I made the trip with the help
of the bird of Solomon.
Taste some healing water – kiss nothing
except the sweetheart’s lip
and the cup of wine.
Now I am biting my own lip,
Solomon’s magnificence, his horse of wind,
his grasp of bird language – at least at this moment.
The bells sound, their tongues
continue to strike. Nothing is sweeter.
I find I am crying in this foreign place
lifted by the wings and feathers of glory.
The grieving chest finds honey –
abandon the scene in motion, sit in the Garden.

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Diana Arterian recently earned her MFA in poetry at the California Institute of the Arts, where she was a Beutner Fellow. In the fall she will begin her Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing as a Merit Fellow at USC. She is a founding member of Gold Line Press, a chapbook publisher, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in River Styx, Grey Sparrow Journal, and Iron Horse Literary Review. She lives in Los Angeles.