Ghalia Shamayleh hails from Jordan in the Middle-East, and is a sophomore in the Wharton School of Business living in Philly. Moreover, she's pursing a Marketing concentration and a Creative Writing minor; She has been writing since 7th grade and has been passionate about poetry.

Three Poems (November 20, 2011. Issue 33.)

Cri de coeur

Laminate your heart,
seems mine is too
bare to bear
with the lunar logic
you've thrown
its way
 
A figment of god's
imagination; I sew
words onto one another
praying for
emergent property,
meaning lies
in the numb letters
of the ghosts
we trace
back to those
we wish to find
 
We all crave a tinge
of sentiment,
and we all make
room for
the makeshift
hand-me-down love,
the love we forget
never belonged
to us,
the love we hate
to remember was
a shadow of what
we could never
attain, a drowsy
meeting of the lips,
we forget sometimes
to wait,
 
I won't laminate mine,
I breathe the air of emotion,
I stand in the midst of ice,
and I stand in the midst
of you

That girl

And her words
are soft,
they lose consonants
as they curve with
His name
held so tightly
between
the parabola
of her lips
 
Under her tongue,
she lets the letters
sway,
it was meant to be
this way,
or at least that's what
He would say,
she takes the heat,
she is the Magnus Opus
God failed to complete
 
And sometimes
when it's dark
and cold,
she feels His fingers
on the folds
of her core;
she's never felt anything
like that before
 
If only she knew how
to hold open that door,
if only He knew what
she was fighting for,
if only she had
a stronger lure,
if only He craved her
just a little bit more,
if only she wasn't
as much of an emotional
whore

Heartfelt

I count my calories
Unintentionally,
like I count
the stars between
our words,
the lit innuendos
and whatever
you want to call
the letters we use
to start the fire

and its not just letters,
we don't need the scribbles
of speech to make our
voices heard,
but I've lost faith
in your tongue,
I've lost my heart
somewhere in
your right lung,
you breathed me in
and all was wrung

So rather than
my intrusive
rummaging of
your inners,
I want you to
find it yourself,
and once you do
let me know
if my heart is
too swollen,
if the fit is too tight,
if there's not enough
spark for it to ignite,
just let me know
if it doesn't feel
right

Table of Contents

Four Poems (August 20, 2011. Issue 30.)

My Blue Moon

You know,
We kind of owe China
a lot of money,
I suppose it's okay
that you're fucking her
but it'll be a pickle
when you take out your
empty wallet
to pay her
the morning after

But she's not
a prostitute
and I'm just practical
enough to assume
that you'd need to pay
a girl to swap spit,
get under your
unchanged sheets,
and pretend to
hit high notes
in your bed

And its funny
how I function,
seems as a kid
I was taught to
point fingers
at those whom
I thought had
broken vases,
and to be honest
the vase you've cracked
might've been
dented all along

but I'm not reporting
you to the authorities
before I find evidence
that what you did
wasn't an act of
temporary retardation
but an act of
deliberate malice,
and its suddenly proving
difficult to do so
as I've grown tired
of giving you weight,
seems the only weight
you bear is due to
the thickness
in your skull
and the only skip
my heart's made for you
was a result of
my weakness in the face
of faces that seem weak

But don't stop the party
on my behalf,
I'm merely a passerby

I've come to tell you
your music pretty loud
but I've made better,
your kisses were sweet
but I'd rather you rot
someone else's core,
your eyes glimmer
but Twilight's gotten overrated,
and I've concluded
things that glitter
are usually made of bull,
your weed's pretty sick
but that's the only reason
she's in your bed,
your heart's really pure
but I've only glimpsed it once
or twice
and it takes more than
a blue moon
to make me fall in love

Real funny, God

The sky looks phony today.
As though God replaced
the habitat
of clouds
with a snap shot
from yesterday
 
And I stare some more
hoping
that I'm high enough
to take a hit
of blue,
to make my lungs
home to the clouds,
and the air naked
 
but I suddenly remember
that I don't smoke,
and if I start
the sky
won't get me
too high
if it's not
real

What Obama Meant

Naivety has taken me
from being
the king of maybes
to
 
I,
The flustered heart
and you,
the king of "I cans"
 
And all those cans
set neatly
on top of each other
give me an
uncanny
vibe
that I am not
what you're
building the tower
to reach
 
But let me be honest
here
I can
be your queen
and play house
around a castle
of my imagination,
I can
be the sound
that you play
before you sleep
to keep you company,
And I can
stay by you
till you make
room for me
on your island
 
But I also can
reject that figment
of a title,
be mute for
a million nights,
and just simply forget
how to wait
 
So maybe your cans
will tower over
mine
but at least
I won't be too high
to mistake
the induced hunger
for
what Obama meant

What I am no longer good at
 
I keep secrets
like I keep swear words
from spilling
from my lips
and onto
your good shirts
when you're being
bad
 
I own a unique
bag of priorities,
it holds things differently,
and unlike your bag,
mine holds you
as though
You
Were what held
it
together
 
It's not a secret
that my mind
is diluted
by thoughts
of you
 
It's no secret
that most of the time
I am waiting
for my weight
to make
that bag of yours
heavy
 
And maybe it's a secret
that this
has become
an attempt
to induce
You to remember
 
that I keep secrets
like I keep swear words
from spilling
from my lips
and onto
your good shirts
because I am
constantly hoping that
your shirts
reflect you well 

Table of Contents

Two Poems (April 20, 2011. Issue 27.)

My Love is Doped

"And for excess of Love my Love is dumb." -Oscar Wilde

Because I am.
So now that
you're sated with
opiates,
are you back
to feel what's under
my skin?

Beyond the graying
shell of me
that you wish to
smoke into oblivion
is more than just
the residual ashes
of your
usual High.

And under my chest
wells up an untapped
nebula,
a sought out
suffocation.

And once again,
now that
your hand is free
of what your lips
Reek of,
you figure
I would do you
good as
a makeshift fix.

The Position I'm In

I am unwinding words,
unzipping speech,
to fathom how
you press that voice
onto skin
I never thought inhaled

I am blaming Scrutiny,
for all the misconceptions
of the letters
the tip of your tongue has traced
on me.

I am living
in aftermath lust around
the trails of thought
you've aroused in me,
to think your finger,
was on your heart,
rather than on the
pending perhaps of making me
plummet.

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