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Poem-a-day

Solstice Pantoum

We roam but see nothing of the moss-colored divine 
while noon throws a redwood shadow on the plaza.  
On the screen: two sallow-skinned children embrace. 
Their bodies say, fight; their bodies say, hide. 

While noon throws a redwood shadow on the plaza; 
summer flecks by, and you are almost gone.   
Your body says, fight; your body says, hide.  
You speak to a girl in the wind-swept garden.

Summer flecks by, and you are almost gone. 
You donate your secret to June’s long days. 
You speak to a girl in the wind-swept garden. 
The color of my suffering is green unaware.

You donate your secret to June’s long days. 
I retrieve my guilt and confess it to the sky.  
The color of my suffering is green. Unaware,  
you touch me like sunset on granite.

I retrieve my guilt & confess it to the sky.  
This solstice may be the end of me, I say. 
You touch me like sunset on granite. 
Sometimes, I giggle at the drama of our age.

This solstice may be the end of me, I say. 
Your eyes turn Maine Coon, choked, lionlike. 
Sometimes, I giggle at the drama of our age.  
Whose unmooring prowls in us now?

Your eyes turn Maine Coon, choked, lionlike. 
Why do we short the long of desire? 
Whose unmooring prowls in us now? 
We roam but see nothing of the moss-colored divine.  

Copyright © 2025 by Deema K. Shehabi. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 31, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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Deema K. Shehabi

Deema K. Shehabi
Photo credit: Omar F. Khorsheed
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About Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-Day is the original and only daily digital poetry series featuring over 250 new, previously unpublished poems by today’s talented poets each year. Khaled Mattawa is the Guest Editor of December. Read or listen to a Q&A with Mattawa about his curatorial process, and learn more about the 2025 Guest Editors. Support Poem-a-Day.  

If you have any questions about Poem-a-Day, visit our Poem-a-Day FAQ.

Previous Poems

Title Author Date
Sheltered Garden H.D. 04/08/2017
As to Why We Will Not Stop (Making the Hats) Sophie Cabot Black 04/07/2017
Dirt Being Dirt Carl Phillips 04/06/2017
Self-Portrait as the Bootblack in Daguerre’s Boulevard du Temple Robin Coste Lewis 04/05/2017
A Place in the Country Toi Derricotte 04/04/2017
The Perfect Poem Kaveh Akbar 04/03/2017
If I Had Known Alice Dunbar-Nelson 04/02/2017
The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face James Weldon Johnson 04/01/2017
They Ate the Bulbs of Tulips Mark Wagenaar 03/31/2017
Syllabus for the Dark Ahead Jehanne Dubrow 03/30/2017

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