Four Poems by Moudi Sbeity

All Things Bloom

You cannot crack open a heart.
No more than you can bend steel
or pry open a still pursed blossom.
No more than you can peel back
the sky or force a seed to sprout
by hammering its shell.
Some things aren’t ready to stand
exposed and naked in the light.
Some cannot bear the violence
of knowing, the insistence of change.
All you can do is shine ever-on with
indiscriminate hope in trust that
all things bloom, with determined
patience that they will.

*

Gulf of My Body

water does not
concern itself
with what name
you give its
shaped body.
Water remains
what it is,
so long traveling,
passing through
our palmed attempt
at claiming it.

*

Whale Shark

A whale shark, according to the five year old at
the climbing gym, is what happens when a whale
eats a shark. Just like that. It’s simple. Everything
is separate and when two things join they just
add to another. The shark doesn’t die in this story.
Nothing changes. The world is still safe, predictable.
The whale shark was his favorite tattoo, but now it’s
erased. My full sleeve tattoos don’t erase though,
and they’re the biggest ones he’s seen. Like really big.
Like really really big. I thought of how when sorrow
consumes joy they don’t simply add to each other,
but become poignant. And when gratitude spills
into grief together they create the conditions for
surrender. Or even how water and flour make bread,
not Water Flour. Some things get lost along the way.
But I didn’t tell him this; that a whale shark is actually
a shark, just a really big one. I wanted more to believe
in the simplicity of his world, in the authenticity of
how things join, then come apart, and in the process
nothing is changed, no one dies. We just continue to
appear and disappear into each other’s lives unaffected,
our innocence not yet capable of breaking.

*

Vote For Dancing
        Cast all your votes for dancing – Hafiz

Send me a ballot that comes with a list of
public art installments and a referendum for
city funded meditation halls, and a closely
watched race for the elected vegetable of the
year – Italian squash. A ballot with a list of
dates for a day of non action, a month, a year.
Some stretch of time we agree to inhabit with
complete silence, in solitude, in stillness.
I want to choose between the many ways to
collectively practice prayer for the next while;
kneeling in front of the same tree at dawn,
submerging our feet in the creek reciting
loving-kindness mantras; may you flow freely,
unobstructed. May you never dry. And if you
do, may you still sing. I want to vote for some
body who, on more days than not, picks up a
poem, eats it, looks inside, loudly grieves.
Somebody who will pardon immigrating
geese, appoint a composer general, sign into
law a tax credit for books purchased by local
authors, farmer’s markets, sustainable meals.
I want a ballot that asks me to vote for harvest.
For dancing. For rain. In just the way a bridge
might vote for connection, and the sun for a
new day. And your hand on my shoulder
for steady, and the sky for welcome, for air.

*

Moudi Sbeity is a first-generation Lebanese-American currently enrolled in the Mindfulness-Based Transpersonal Counseling masters program at Naropa University. Prior to attending Naropa, they co-owned and operated a Lebanese restaurant in Salt Lake City, which served as a queer safe space. Moudi was also a named plaintiff in Kitchen v. Herbert, the landmark case that brought marriage equality to Utah in 2014. As a person who stutters, they are passionate about writing and poetry as transpersonal practices in self-expression.

Moudi’s poems have appeared in the following anthologies; Irreplaceable by Nan Seymour and Terry Tempest Williams (Moon In The Rye Press, 2025), Love Is For All Of Us by James Crews (Storey Publishing, May 2025), The Nature Of Our Times by Luisa A. Igloria (Paloma Press, Fall 2025). Moudi’s first book, Habibi Means Beloved, a memoir on growing up queer and stuttering in Lebanon, is expected to be published in late 2026 by University of Utah Press.