Nabati poetry, fragments attributed to Mohammed bin Salman

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I am the one who climbs the difficult heights,
and does not fear the steep ascent.
If I aim for glory, I reach it—
or I perish in its pursuit.

I walk the path though the night is long,
carrying the weight of what must be done.
If hardship comes, I meet it standing—
for the honor of my land is not undone.

*****

Although he is said to write verse, I don’t know of a complete poem in English translation by Mohammed bin Salman that can be treated as a citable literary text.

What does exist is looser and more elusive: occasional verses attributed to him in Arabic media (often quoted in speeches or cultural settings); lines in the Nabati tradition (vernacular Bedouin-style poetry), where authorship can be fluid and performance-based; translations that circulate online, but without firm provenance or consistent wording. With MBS, you’re not dealing with a published poet but with a cultural participant in a living oral–literary tradition.

About Nabati poetry, ChatGPT explains it as:

  • Oral / semi-oral tradition
  • Often improvised or situational
  • Heavy on:
    • honour
    • endurance
    • lineage
    • desert imagery
  • Designed for performance and social signaling, not quiet page-reading

So even good Nabati verse can feel:

  • repetitive
  • declarative
  • rhetorically direct

That’s by design.

Jeff Sypeck, ‘January Report from the Food Pantry Coordinator’

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The sign. The side door. Come inside.
We’re here by nine or ten. She sobbed.
Pack extra peas. The dealer robbed
His boss. No soups. They need a ride

To get their tags. Some coffee too.
He’s had a stroke. It’s just a sprain.
She can’t mow lawns for all the rain.
She’s starved, but not for food. She’s blue

But cackles. Eggs. A constant cough.
No chicken. You apologize:
We don’t have diapers in that size.
We’ll pay before they cut you off

And let you freeze. Her son’s on pills
And so’s the wife. For seven weeks
They’ll keep the kids. His engine leaks.
She’s out of propane. Bring the bills

But come by five. Her swollen knees
Are healing slow. His wife dropped dead
On Christmas. Have some frozen bread,
A bladder wash, a bag of cheese,

A pack of chocolate shakes, a pound
Of venison, a protein bar,
A couple sleeping in their car,
A case of noodles, barren ground

On farmhands’ faces, cracked and worn.
When silence falls, go find a shelf,
Collect your neighbors as yourself
And stack them up, like cans of corn.

***** 

Jeff Sypeck writes: “Usually I write about history, and my poetry tends to focus on the past, but sometimes the here and now come calling, with tough and immediate needs.”

This poem was originally published in Rattle.

Jeff Sypeck is the author of the pop-history book Becoming Charlemagne and co-author of I Have Started for Canaan, the first full-length history of a Reconstruction-era African American community in Maryland. His latest book is an annotated, peer-reviewed translation of a Carolingian calendar poem. He lives in an agricultural reserve an hour outside Washington, D.C.
www.jeffsypeck.com
www.quidplura.com

“Shutdown Food Line” by Geoff Livingston is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Short poem: RHL, ‘Earth (and Mars)’

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This planet is humanity’s place of birth,
but not the end of what we’re capable of –
we’ve just begun.
 
But don’t let Elon Musk take off from Earth:
he’ll nuke us if and when he gets pissed off…
or just for fun.

*****

‘Earth (and Mars)’ was first published in Rat’s Ass Review.

“The trouble with space!” by Philip Ed is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Sonnet: Timothy Sandefur, ‘Aubade’

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I kiss you every morning, even though
you’re far away; even though your bed’s
a thousand miles out of reach. I know
it’s fantasy — only in my head —
I know I cannot slide my fingertips
across the smooth skin of your shoulders, your arms —
or along the sleek sloping of your hips —
or fall into oblivion in the warm
raven tangle of your hair — and that
it’s just poetic silliness to think
that you can feel my chest against your back,
or the brush of flesh when my body instinct-
ively reacts —
               and yet somehow I feel
the distance, not the touch, is what’s unreal.

*****

‘Aubade’ was originally published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

Timothy Sandefur is an attorney practicing law in Phoenix, and also the author of several books including biographies of Frederick Douglass and Jacob Bronowski, and a book of poems called Some Notes on the Silence. He has a Substack page: sandefur.substack.com.

“5/365 – Reach Out {Explored}” by susivinh is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Elizabeth Hurst, ‘April’

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I have to admire their heartless lust
Performing with no emotional fuss,
And when it’s done, no flower cares
That its lover still sprawls bare
To bees and wind, to hummingbirds.
Petals don’t worry if they’re the third
Or fourth—it just doesn’t matter
After they’ve spread pollen’s splatter.
They live to turn their airy tricks.
No rumpled sheets, no mess to fix,
No wet spots stuck to sated thighs
And stamens aren’t concerned with size
Or any of our skillful lies
Or hearts destroyed as sorrows rise.
No flower mourns when another dies.

*****

‘April’ was first published in Snakeskin… in March.

Elizabeth Hurst is originally from Los Angeles and moved up to San Francisco many years ago. She lives out by the beach with her husband, Gerald Stack.

“April Flowers” by Jocey K is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Sonnet: Daniel Kemper, ‘We Talked’

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Why the mumbled answers, often feeling
weary, staring out the window: bitter,
wistful, dreamy, harried — always reeling,
not engaging, letting out a titter,
mocking laughs or strange and distant crying?
But eventually she says it’s cancer,
not affairs, not me – then we were trying,
talking even if there was no answer.
But I would have those awful times again:
I whispered her to sleep and once she slept
I stroked her scalp and tucked her sheets, and then
I ran off to the shower and I wept.
We talked. We really talked though it was draining,
as one, about the time that was remaining.

*****

Daniel Kemper writes: “This poem is utterly imagination, perhaps of the “O my prophetic soul” variety. Alexandra (that’s her name) and I were out of contact at the time, but it would have been right as she came down with cancer, if I have my timeline right. It’s a multi-meter sonnet of the kind I thought probably the easiest to which I could introduce people. It starts off in trochaic meter and changes to iambic at the volta. This design choice was to have descending meter for the down mood, and when looking at the bright spot, change to ascending meter. The couplet unifies them via iambic meter plus feminine endings, hopefully that accented the coming together of the two at the end, even if unconsciously.”

‘We Talked’ was originally published in Rat’s Ass Review.

Daniel Kemper, a former tournament-winning wrestler, black belt in traditional Shotokan karate, and infantryman has earned a BA in English, an MCSE (Systems Engineering), an MBA, and an MA in English and had works accepted for publication at more than a dozen magazines, including a pushcart nomination. He’s been an invited presenter at PAMLA 2024 and presided over the Poetics Panel in 2025 and has been the feature poet at several Sacramento venues.

Photo: “Sick Day” by RLHyde is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.


 

Sonnet: Keith Roberts, ‘Lather’

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Inside the shower’s stream the morning blurs,
ceremony wakes on white marble tile;
brushed steel and shaving brush wait, rituals
that ask the rushing mind to pause a while.

The bowl presents the soap, the steam the heat;
damp badger bristles swirl, patient and slow.
No canned foam, no gelled and fleeting cheat,
hands repeating what older barbers know.

The lather builds like weather in the hand,
a cloud coaxed up from water, soap, and time;
slow turns that ask a man to pause and stand
at break of day before its clamors chime.

Hands learned the quiet patience of the bowl,
small weather turning slowly in the soul.

*****

Keith Roberts writes: “I’d be remiss if I didn’t give my wife credit for this poem. For my birthday she gave me a bowl, a brush, and a puck of all-natural shave soap from a local artisan. A little whisk into lather, the woody-whiskey scent comes up, and suddenly I swear I can hear modal jazz somewhere in the background. In a world built around consumption, algorithms, and binary takes, it’s important to our humanity to rediscover the transcendent in small, ordinary experiences like this. And maybe more importantly, to listen when other people share theirs. This poem is a thank you to my wife for helping me find one.

“I’m just starting this writing and poetry journey.  I’m a recovering math major with graduate degrees in Computer Science and Computational Social Science. Most of my career was spent living in the abstract: programming, modeling, data, systems. When my dad passed away a couple of years ago, something in me shifted. I started writing partly as a way to process the loss and partly to leave my kids something more durable than an Instagram feed. Also, and this is important, it gives me great comfort knowing that dad jokes can, in fact, achieve a kind of immortality…even in sonnet form. If that garners a few more eye rolls from my kids after I’m gone, I’ll consider my work a success.”

‘Lather’ was first published in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily

Photo: “Lather” by RLHyde is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Sonnet: John Gallas, ‘Mol Sonnet’

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a man will cross the world at the smallest hope of love

Beep. Wrrrr. Clickclack. Ssssss. ‘Hello?’
Ssssss. Ssssss. Ssssss. ‘It’s’ – crackle – ‘Geet.’
Crackle. ‘We could’ – buzzzzz. Ssssss – ‘meet.’
Ssssss. Ssssss. ‘If’ – crackle crackle – ‘Joe?’
Umm. ‘I’mchangingtrainsatLeuvenstation
halfpastfiveonTuesdaymorning’bye.’
Clickclack. Beep. The Monday midnight sky
shuddered like a fridge. Our conversation
never matched our love. Too pissed to drive,
I took my bike. The roads were swiped with ice.
It snowed. My front teeth froze. I fell off twice.
‘The next train‘ – Jesus! Push me! – ‘to arrive…‘
We met – still moving. ‘Kiss me!’ That was it.
I biked back home to Mol. The sun shone. Shit.

*****

John Gallas writes: “Romantic Love called upon to go out in the cold on a bike to resurrect its glories, which may never quite have been what they are remembered as. I enjoyed the stop-start challenge of the expression of hesitation, and of producing punctuation of indecision and effort. Perhaps the last word, far from being annoyance, hints at sadness.”

John Gallas, Aotearoa/NZ poet, published mostly by Carcanet. Saxonship Poet (see www.saxonship.org), Fellow of the English Association, St Magnus Festival Orkney Poet, librettist, translator and biker. 2025 Midlands Writing Prize winner. Presently living in Markfield, Leicestershire. Website is www.johngallaspoetry.co.uk which has a featured Poem of the Month, complete book list, links and news.  

Photo: “OuderAmstel” by Markus Keuter is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Aaron Poochigian, ‘The Old Man’

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The old man wakens to a mute caregiver
pushing his chair past gulls along a railing.
This is the morning when he gets the river.
Surrendering to wind and a prevailing

saline tang kicked up from the Atlantic,
he lets whatever strikes him resonate.
A taut rod wrangling with a snagged and frantic
flounder whisks him to a lake upstate

where he, a wee one, tumbled off the dock,
his virgin perch still flapping in his grip.
A ferry, then, so very on the clock,
transports him to the boxy convoy ship

he steered through moonlit breakers toward Pyongyang
with perfect timing: his approach kissed land
at dawn. He dropped the ramp, and roughnecks sprang
out of the gangway onto commie sand.

Joggers, though, tug him back home from the war.
Whole herds of them keep gallivanting by
as thunder like they own the slate-paved shore.
He has to sit there coveting their high.

Sneakered and young as far as he can see,
they just keep leaving him behind to long
for liberty and the serene esprit
he got to savor when his legs were strong.

*****

Aaron Poochigian writes: “About the poem, all I want to say is that I think of it as flash fiction. I’ve started doing more studies of fictional characters in verse.”

‘The Old Man’ was first published in Portico Quarterly.

Aaron Poochigian earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. His latest poetry collection, American Divine, the winner of the Richard Wilbur Award, came out in 2021. He has published numerous translations with Penguin Classics and W.W. Norton. His work has appeared in such publications as Best American Poetry, The Paris Review and Poetry.
aaronpoochigian.com
americandivine.net

Photo: “Bognor Regis Pier – Mar 2011 – Portrait of a Working Man at Play” by Gareth1953 All Right Now is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Sonnet: Beth Houston, ‘September’

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When spring’s ghost joins me on the deck to watch
Gilt city lights click on across the bay,
Some downtown maid squeaks windows, wipes the splotch
Between us. Here, this quiet view. Soft clay
And pungent eucalyptus, thick with rain,
Exude their essence. Summer’s gloom unwinds,
A pane has shattered, and each rampant cane
Of luscious juicy blackberries reminds
My grief entwining August’s humid air.
A wedge of geese pries open autumn, herds
Fat purple clouds toward dusk above the glare
Of distant offices. Your murdered words
Of love on voicemail echo you were dead
Before you put that bullet through your head.

*****

Beth Houston writes: “Regarding the sonnet: This is one poem I’d prefer to let the reader chew on without me explaining anything. It does have some tricky time aspects…”

She adds: “I have announced the submission period for the next anthology on the Rhizome Press website. Included are updated guidelines and new emails for submissions and general mail (no longer gmail). Folks will have plenty of time to submit. I just hope I don’t get an avalanche at the last minute. But better loads of poems than not getting them. I’m eager for people to let their poet friends know. I’d love to get LOTS of submissions.

‘September’ was first published in Rat’s Ass Review.

Beth Houston (www.bethhouston.com) has taught writing (mostly creative writing) at ten universities and colleges in California and Florida and has worked as a writer and editor. She has published a couple hundred poems in dozens of literary journals. She writes free verse and formal poetry, mostly sonnets, and has published a novel, two nonfiction books, and six poetry books (out of print). She edits the Extreme formal poetry anthologies via one of her indie presses, Rhizome Press (www.rhizomepress.com).

Photo: “Formation” by Nature_Freak is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.