Magdeline Maher


Hamsa as Talisman
After Philip Metres
.

As a child I was cautioned against false prophets and dichotomies, but then why do
I wake up to a memory of my mother’s eyeglasses and a pounding heart: an omen

vs. a bam ba-babambambam, a Swedish trap pop artist’s pounding beat: an earworm.

The static when all is silent: an earworm.

I have an earworm for months and spend seven weeks searching for
a verse, scouring magazines, the cloud, other writers:

“
I hope you find your
وادي

…and I hope you find your
وادي
“

to realize I remembered only one of those words right and the lines in my memory
aren’t real, so
I write them now: an omen.

I walk into a temple and help light candles,
charring the silver wick to stain white wax, but goddamn if it still

doesn’t glow. The flame: an earworm.

I think about Kabir, and his poem is selected as
prayer of the evening: an omen.

Instead of envying the women I work with, I fall in love with them, because it makes things less
complicated: fighting an omen against

memories of a dead lover’s eyes: an earworm.

Don’t think I won’t burn the body to break the memory.
Don’t think I won’t destroy the brain to kill the earworm.

I stay up coding until 2am for the ninth week in a row and wonder why I nightmare: omen.
I doze off, standing on a crowded subway car when the train halts: omen, and I am
pushed onto a woman, sitting: omen. I think she’s pretty, but I don’t tell her: omen. Instead, I apologize: omen.
She tells me it’s okay: an earworm.

.

Magdeline Maher is a writer from Georgia. Mizna, Hobart Pulp, and other magazines have published her work. In her free time, she likes to read, find surrealist art, and seek the silver linings. You can find her at bintmaher.weebly.com or @sarsoura_isdoingherbest on Instagram.
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