M. Ait Ali

M. Ait Ali was born in Agadir, Morocco. He earned a BEng in Electricity and now is pursuing a BA in English. His waking hours are well-spent on books and dissociation-induced meditation sessions. His work can be found in The Tipton Poetry Journal, Variant Literature Inc., Straylight Literary Arts Mag, Sandstorm UTPB Mag, The Cape Rock, Black Fox Lit Mag, and many other publications. 

Read/Write/Dream Operations

Mom, 60-flower-adorned, dusts off my books;
fingertip-kisses the red flag—a fine art—
hung on a blue wall; hums a three-syllable song
through the window—hoping it would save
a tree from wilt, or a stray cat from a four-wheeled
washing machine.—Mom, the sun,
loves Morpheus’ shades most when the clock fingers are at their laziest or weakest:—she calls it “spiritual nap.”
Mom, skillful in establishing silence, goes downstairs
as though eidola were practically a pair of feet. Mom
makes some peppermint tea—the smell!—hollers out
the name a 6-feet-3-inch man was given.—
You can imagine all the milk having been deposited
in my name.—She applies detergent; curses something as curt as:
“Ikh-h-h-!”—then rubs the sink’s UFOs with too much conviction
in a lofty cause. Mom, tender hands, either hates or pities
the half-clothed singer on TV.
“Mercy on my ears, bony goat!” she yells; unplugs the TV;
gazes again through the window; murmurs something only
cats penetrate the meaning of; leaves an economical laugh trailing behind her; stands still; turns around; consumes the laugh into
myriad lights in the hallway.—Mom, beauty preserved in amber,
eyes gleaming towards subsequent decades, talks Morocco,
Margaret Thatcher, King Hassan II, and Noah.

(She once stayed indoors for three winters; declared the world ugly,
And that no prayer could save it.)

Mom—5-feet-5-inches, on the cute spectrum—lies snugly
in sun florets blankets; finger-counts something fictional, then dreams,
and dreams ‘til it’s a hot sun in the realms of Fatoma.
Mom, rosy cheeks, wakes up to me massacring whatever in my mind.
“I saw you sitting under a fig tree, teaching children yellow circles
on a handheld chalkboard,” says the dream.

Accessible Symbols

Hope was so muffled and far-off
That man had to lean in so he could hear its lipclap.

And—having leaned for years—for
The Martian years which dragged their moloch fingers
‘round the best of his faces—

He is now looked upon
As a lamppost bowed down by darkness—
Shedding a crooked grin on a mud puddle
Which was not even his.

And—having furnished with light such a place—
He is now beset on all his sides of joy
By an army of airborne hangers-on.

Stingy to buy himself a dream out of simple matters
He smokes mistakes worth the distance:—
His simplest tool to drive away a very common woe.

And now that Summer yawned His mouth of hell,
Man has yet to find a new puddle to beam at.

His light bowbeaten and gentle—
Resorting solely to the depths of scorched leaves,

Looks with the gleam of another world’s eyes
On a so-common night
Spreading itself thick on the ruts of longing.