Poem of the Week: Kim Roberts

Portrait of Hippocrates, or Buqrat

from The Falnama of 1703, Topkapi Palace, Istanbul

O augury seeker,
...................know and be aware...

In the book of divination,

Hippocrates rides the simurgh,

..................a mythical bird,

as he returns to his home

carved from emeralds
.....................on Mount Qaf.

With his white turban,

scholar's dark beard,
..............and bright orange robe,

he looks over one shoulder

and strokes the bird's

....................golden tail feathers

.......as she flits through an azure sky

between eddies of clouds.
..................Healer of the sick,

Builder of the first hospital,

Master of alchemy,

................astrology and magic,

.....I have prepared myself

for your prognostication
.................with bathing and prayers,
......opened the book in my blindness,

opened my heart in hope
...................and placed my body,

my wounded body, in your hands.

-Kim Roberts

Used by permission.

Kim Roberts' most recent book, Animal Magnetism (Pearl Editions, 2011), won the 2009 Pearl Prize. She is the editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the anthology Full Moon On K Street: Poems About Washington DC (Plan B Press, 2010). She is the author of two additional books of poems, The Kimnama (Vrzhu Press, 2007), and The Wishbone Galaxy (Washington Writers Publishing House, 1994), and the nonfiction chapbook Lip Smack: A History of Spoken Word in DC (Beltway Editions, 2010).

Roberts will be reading at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, March 22-25, 2012. Join us!

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