Ben Heller Week 6- Mona Arshi's Hummingbird

 “Hummingbird” is a poetic masterpiece which incorporates themes of love, fleeting time, and the divine. Arshi’s use of the hummingbird as a metaphor for the fleeting things of life is tactful in its ability to transport the narrator to a setting and a time far away. When “your fingers fly, a momentary grasp”, the momentary pleasure of the beauty of the hummingbird is conveyed. Just as the author is reminiscing on times long, something occurs, asking to “press your curing skin to mine, dissolve and pronounce me”, pleading for the little bird to give her meaning, to bring back youth. The beauty captured by the hummingbird becomes so alluring that she asks for her “eyes to fallout and embed in the carpet, rooting”. A recurring theme in Arshi’s work is the divine. G-d appears to be a character in every poem, either principal or supporting. The qualities of youth and time, love and beauty, that the author so wishes to extract from her interactions with the Hummingbird are echoed back to the reader through the phrase “Be G-d”. She then turns to another image of power- the sun. Though this power be reluctant to help her, she makes her plea, asking the sun to “open your eyes… Slide open the bone-zip of my spine, anoint each rigid peak”. This conjures imagery of the heavens above and the holy, pure, basking in the glorious, luscious glow of the sun. Suddenly, finding her entreaty to have been in vain, she makes one last measly request. “Here's my mouth, hummingbird, linger there, and hold my breath.” Breath, like the Hummingbird, is a momentary thing. Beauty is ephemeral, as reflected with the Hummingbird in hues of green and violet and rose, and the breath in its sustenance of life. The poem speaks to our collective yearning to return to those things which make life beautiful. 


Ask the stems in the glass to bend. Let

Your fingers fly, a momentary grasp then

slip into spaces, surge in and out of folds

where breasts begin to curve and rise.

Be God. Press your curing skin to mine,

dissolve and pronounce me. Let my eyes

fallout and embed in the carpet, rooting.

Let my hands arrange the air for you,

braiding. Reluctant sun at the window, open

your eyes burn through the dense haze with

your severe love. Slide open the bone-zip of

my spine, anoint each rigid peak. Take my

limbs and fold me over. Here's my mouth,

hummingbird, linger there, and hold

my breath.

Somebody Loves You by Mona Arshi review – talk is cheap ...

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