BIG CRUNCH

by Sally Zakariya

Dark energy, the mysterious force powering the expansion of the universe, appears to be weakening, according to a survey that could “overthrow” scientists’ current understanding of the fate of the cosmos. If confirmed, the results from the dark energy spectroscopic instrument (Desi) team at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona would have profound implications for theories about the evolution of the universe, opening up the possibility that its current expansion could eventually go into reverse in a “big crunch”. —The Guardian, March 19, 2025

Maybe we’ve all just had enough.

Raging wildfires… melting icebergs…
rising temperatures… falling birth rates…
whispers of war… growing fascism…
divided nation…

Where will it all end?

And now scientists are worried—
it looks like the universe itself
has had enough and has stopped
expanding.

Before you know it, those lady telescopes
(Nancy Grace Roman and Vera C. Rubin)
will huddle on a star, drinking tea
and tut-tutting about the end of it all.

But don’t worry.

Whether the universe starts expanding again
or—gulp—does a cosmic 180 and contracts
in a big crunch some billions of years from now,
we’ll still have plenty of time to destroy our own
little part of it in the meanwhile.

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 100 publications and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her publications include All Alive Together, Something Like a Life, Muslim Wife, The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, and When You Escape. She edited and designed a poetry anthology, Joys of the Table, and blogs at www.butdoesitrhyme.com.

LESSONS FROM THE PAST

by Sally Zakariya

The New York TImes, October 17, 2024

Unearthed in Peru 
signs of a female sovereign
thirteen centuries ago

In the tomb painting
she’s wearing a crown
and holding court from
a power throne

We’ve had so far a very
masculine view of this
old civilization, say
archaeologists, devoted 
diggers of the past 

Could be we’ve had 
a pretty masculine view
of this new world, too

Could be the time
has come for another 
woman leader here 
in these Americas

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 100 publications and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her publications include All Alive Together, Something Like a Life, Muslim Wife, The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, and When You Escape. She edited and designed the poetry anthology Joys of the Table and blogs (occasionally) at www.butdoesitrhyme.com.

NEANDERTHALS IN THE TILE

by Sally Zakariya

This floor tile imported from Turkey and installed during a home renovation contains what is believed to be a cross section of an ancient human jawbone. (Courtesy of Reddit user Kidipadeli75 via The Washington Post)

Check the counters and floors

check all the travertine tiles

Look for signs of the old ones

reaching up through time

   slivers of bone

      shards of teeth

Imagine the beginning: a natural

hot spring somewhere in Turkey

Layer after layer of plants and animals

trapped in the mud and fossilized

Mammoths, rhinos, giraffes,

deer, reptiles—even humans—

embedded in the travertine

Look down and count the years—

a million or more

Each step we take on earth, we walk

on the past

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 100 publications and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her publications include All Alive Together, Something Like a Life, Muslim Wife, The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, and When You Escape. She edited and designed a poetry anthology Joys of the Table and blogs at www.butdoesitrhyme.com.

GHOST LAKE

by Sally Zakariya

A kayaker on Lake Manly at sunset in Death Valley National Park, California on Tuesday. (Bridget Bennett for The Washington Post, March 1, 2024)

They don’t call it Death Valley for nothing.
Dry, desolate desert—who’d expect
an ancient lake to reclaim its old home?

I’m back, the waters whisper to Badwater Basin,
its soil salty with geologic tears, memories
of a time long gone.

Ninety miles long, six hundred feet deep—
that was then, before the last ice age
gave way to a warmer world.

Native peoples, a gold rush, borax mines, 
twenty-mule teams—a busy history 
for the nation’s driest spot.

Now rain, rain, record-breaking rain 
has resurrected the lake, thanks to climate
change gone out of control.

But put your kayak away. Already
the ghost lake is evaporating,
too shallow now for boats.

Farewell, the waters murmur. But
if the humans don’t take care, I’ll
be back before you know it.


Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 100 publications and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her publications include All Alive Together, Something Like a Life, Muslim Wife, The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, and When You Escape. She edited and designed a poetry anthology, Joys of the Table, and blogs at www.butdoesitrhyme.com.

LEAP DAY 2024

by Sally Zakariya

In the fourth year the calendar

cracks open and out leaps 

an extra day, neither winter nor spring 

but somewhere on the cusp, 

let’s say the cusp of March, 

itself a cusp of sorts 

somewhere between 

lion and lamb.

So say you have one more day   

this year, another day to add

to your store from birth to death 

over a lifetime, no strings attached, 

nothing expected in return. 

Outside a scurry of snowflakes dance

on the early crocus, neither winter

nor spring but somewhere on the cusp.

What will you do with your extra day?

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 100 publications and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her publications include All Alive Together, Something Like a Life, Muslim Wife, The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, and When You Escape. She edited and designed a poetry anthology, Joys of the Table, and blogs at www.butdoesitrhyme.com.

WAR AT CHRISTMAS

by Sally Zakariya

The Rev. Munther Isaac in front of the Nativity scene at Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. Using broken cement and paving stones, the Congregation placed the baby Jesus in the center of a pile of debris from a collapsed home, inspired by television images of children being pulled from the rubble, Issac says. Photo: Ayman Oghanna for NPR.

The poinsettia sits on the bookcase

in front of an old Japanese print—

a battle scene that features

the rising sun flag

 

The circle of blood-red petals

echoes the bursting rays

of the sun

 

Something’s going on here

that isn’t much like 

Christmas

 

In Bethlehem they’re observing

the day, not celebrating it—

not while thousands are dying

in Gaza with no cease fire 

in sight

 

A silent night with no bombs

would be a blessing but 

the bombs rain down

and the children cry

 

Let us hope for a happier

peaceful New Year

 

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 100 publications and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her publications include All Alive Together, Something Like a Life, Muslim Wife, The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, and When You Escape. She edited and designed a poetry anthology, Joys of the Table, and blogs at www.butdoesitrhyme.com.

CONSIDER THE COMET

by Sally Zakariya

Some night a lucky few of us may spot
a comet poised in the northern sky,
its large body of dust and ice flaring
out behind it, trailing packets of light
we see as green.

They call it Comet C/2022 E3,
a mouthful of a name, and it hasn’t
come by for fifty thousand years,
cruising its elliptical orbit around
the sun in its own good time.

I read somewhere that life is held
together with imprecise words
and inexact thoughts, but
scientists seem pretty precise,
pretty exact, about this comet.

Or maybe it’s just life down here 
on earth that we ponder inexactly, 
imprecisely.

Maybe it’s just our worldly trials 
and tribulations that we approach 
guardedly, side-eyed, warily,
so much this, so little that.

Who can know what’s coming?

Perhaps it’s different for comets.
At any rate, unless its giant orbit 
takes it beyond our solar system, 
we can welcome old C/2022 again
fifty thousand years from now.

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 100 publications and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her publications include Something Like a Life, Muslim Wife, The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, and When You Escape. She edited and designed a poetry anthology, Joys of the Table, and blogs at www.butdoesitrhyme.com.  

GRANDMA'S NIGHTGOWN

by Sally Zakariya

Handed down and down 

faded to palest purple

now tissue-soft cotton

A slit in the seam 

allows a quick glimpse

of that intimate intersection

of love and creation

hers to do with what she will

or so we thought for years 

until the high court snatched

that liberty away

Sleepy, she smooths

the thrice-owned nightgown

snuggles down under

the supposed safety 

of a heavy blanket 

dreams of owning 

her own self

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in 100 publications and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her publications include Something Like a Life, Muslim Wife, The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, and When You Escape. She edited and designed a poetry anthology, Joys of the Table, and blogs at www.butdoesitrhyme.com.

GOOD MORNING, STAR

by Sally Zakariya

We greet you with awe, with wonder,

Earendel, Morning Star, farthest star

we humans have yet glimpsed 

through our roving lens in space,

older by far than ancient,

brighter and larger than our own

blazing sun, which bows

in deference to your greatness.

Gleaming blue in the galaxy Sunrise Arc,

you first shone your brilliant beams 

across a young and growing universe 

billions of years ago—light that reaches 

our eyes here on earth at last.

A single star? A cluster? Perhaps 

the black hole that survives

a dying star? Astronomers may

find out when they send a new, 

more powerful eye in the sky 

to plumb your stellar secrets.

What wonders they may discover.  

You hint at cosmic possibilities—

existence beyond our fathoming,

a reality beyond our earthly grasp,

life beyond life.

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her publications include Something Like a Life, Muslim Wife, The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, and When You Escape. She edited and designed the poetry anthology Joys of the Table. She blogs at www.butdoesitrhyme.com.

GOOD-BYE, IVORY BILL

by Sally Zakariya

The ivory-billed woodpecker is one of nearly two dozen species of animals and plants that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has officially declared extinct. (Auscape/Universal Images Group/Getty Images via The Washington Post, September 29, 2021)

Few were privileged to see it

(if in fact they saw it)

but many clung to hope

that the Lord God Bird

would show himself

in all his feathered glory

a refugee from the primeval garden 

rising with majestic shudder of wings

opening his massive beak

wailing a proud “I Am!”

Was it overactive imagination

or just silly optimism

to think that God might save 

his wondrous creature 

as a sign for us of immortality?

Or must we, as the scientists 

now say, vainly watch 

for one who never comes again?

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 80 print and online journals and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her most recent publication is Something Like a Life (Gyroscope Press). She is also the author of Muslim Wife, The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, When You Escape, Insectomania, and Arithmetic and other verses, as well as the editor of a poetry anthology, Joys of the Table.

JUNETEENTH WORDS

by Sally Zakariya

Arlington County [VA] workers power washed away Black Lives Matter chalk art in front of a home in the Boulevard Manor neighborhood this morning. An outraged neighbor posted on social media about the removal of the chalk art, which featured words and phrases like “There comes a time when silence is betrayal,” “Justice 4 All,” “MLK,” and “BLM.” A portion of the art was on the county-owned sidewalk and road, while the rest was in the home’s driveway. “I am both saddened and outraged. My friend and colleague at Ashlawn has had a formal complaint made about her daughter’s chalk art on the driveway, sidewalk and street in front of their home,” wrote Dana Crepeau. “I spoke with the Arlington County employees, who did not want to remove the chalk but were told they must. I asked permission to post their photos.” —ARL now, June 19, 2020. Photo Credit: @dcsingerdc/Twitter)

There comes a time when silence is

betrayal.  –Martin Luther King Jr.

Justice for all–wise words chalked
in bright yellow down the driveway
spilling onto sidewalk and street

Words we must heed in these days
of reckoning, of reassessment
of long-delayed reparations

Black lives matter–words washed
away by county workers with power
hoses on this day of all days

Saddened and outraged say neighbors
who grab chalk and paint to make
words bloom from house to house

Silence is betrayal–it’s time
for us all to speak up

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 75 print and online journals and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her most recent publication is Muslim Wife (Blue Lyra Press, 2019). She is also the author of The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, When You Escape, Insectomania, and Arithmetic and other verses, as well as the editor of a poetry anthology Joys of the Table. Zakariya blogs at www.butdoesitrhyme.com. 

SYCAMORE, SYCAMORE

by Sally Zakariya

“Today we published the results of this quantum supremacy experiment in the Nature article, ‘Quantum Supremacy Using a Programmable Superconducting Processor.’ We developed a new 54-qubit processor, named ‘Sycamore,’ that is comprised of fast, high-fidelity quantum logic gates, in order to perform the benchmark testing. Our machine performed the target computation in 200 seconds, and from measurements in our experiment we determined that it would take the world’s fastest supercomputer 10,000 years to produce a similar output.” —Posted on October 23, 2019 to the Google AI Blog by John Martinis, Chief Scientist Quantum Hardware and Sergio Boixo, Chief Scientist Quantum Computing Theory, Google AI Quantum. Photograph of the Sycamore processor by Erik Lucero, Research Scientist and Lead Production Quantum Hardware.

Hello world, things are changing.
What I knew only as a shag-bark tree—
Sycamore—now names computing
power beyond imagining, now quantum,
supreme, superlative, incomparable.

A dance of particles, tangling, entangled.
To Einstein, “spooky action at a distance.”
To me, complex mystery of mysteries,
wonder of intelligent wonders.

How can I comprehend such power
and speed, such limitless possibilities?
Like us prone to error, but unlike us
capable of brilliance beyond measure.

A human attempt to emulate creation?
Perhaps. Or is it proof how far our
mortal minds can reach?


Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 75 print and online journals and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her most recent publication is Muslim Wife (Blue Lyra Press, 2019). She is also the author of The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, When You Escape, Insectomania, and Arithmetic and other verses, as well as the editor of a poetry anthology, Joys of the Table.

THE BIRTH OF AMERICA

by Sally Zakariya

Above is the logo of The 1619 Project, a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. The Project aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.

Not 1492 when Columbus landed
not 1607 when settlers founded Jamestown
but 1619 when twenty-some Africans
arrived in chains

Port Comfort their landing place
proved no comfort for them

That’s when America began
land of freedom but not for them
land of plenty but not for them
land of everlasting shame
for us but not for them

Twelve million stolen from their homes
two million died on the Middle Passage
half a million sold into slavery here

They cleared the land and built
the plantation houses
they cleaned and cooked and toiled
to make white people rich

They picked cotton for my grandfather
a white-starched-collar lawyer
in Memphis who didn’t have to bend
his back or dirty his hands

They fought for this country
their country and ours
and now … and now …

Four hundred years is time
to admit our history
time to make things right

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 75 print and online journals and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her most recent publication is The Unknowable Mystery of Other People (Poetry Box, 2019). She is also the author of Personal Astronomy, When You Escape, Insectomania, and Arithmetic and other verses, as well as the editor of the poetry anthology Joys of the Table.

BLACK HOLE

by Sally Zakariya

Today (April 10), a global collaboration of more than 200 astronomers presented the first image of a directly-observed black hole. The picture of a glowing orange-yellow ring around a dark core, was compiled from observations by eight ground-based radio telescopes known collectively as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). —Live Science

Einstein dreamed them
far flung across the cosmos

Scientists to come had faith in them
believed in them, believed in the math
  that proved them

But until now only God could see them
their aura so bright a thousand suns blush
their pull so unimaginably great
their dark core so unfathomably deep
that to dare to submit to the immensity
to cross the impossible threshold
is to plunge to eternity


Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 75 journals and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her most recent publication is the chapbook The Unknowable Mystery of Other People from The Poetry Box. She is also the author of Personal Astronomy, When You Escape, Insectomania, and Arithmetic and other verses, as well as the editor of a poetry anthology, Joys of the Table.

WEIGHTLESS

by Sally Zakariya

On November 16, 2018 the redefinition of the kilogram (as explained above) was approved at the general confrence on weights and measures in Versailles by a vote of 57 nations. Henceforth, all seven units in the International System of Units, otherwise known as the S.I., will no longer be defined by material objects and instead will be defined only by abstract constants of nature.

“What we call ‘measurement’ is an estimate. . . . The true value, only the universe knows.” —Stephan Schlamminger, National Institute of Standards and Technology, quoted in The New York Times, November 16, 2018


I can’t hope to understand,
not with a C in high school physics,
but what was real, material, a sleek, smooth shape
with heft in the hand, is now—what?
abstraction, mathematical mystery
Avogadro’s number
Planck’s constant
arcana of the mind, someone else’s mind.

Le Grand K, as they called it when it still reigned,
is an artifact of history now, the reality of kilogram
a mental construct beyond my comprehension.

Well, let the universe do the math
as it does for all of us, for everything,
for the humming telephone wires
outside my window, for the squirrels
scurrying up the oak tree.

Let the universe measure my life, my worth,
and everyone’s. Knowing physics and math
won’t be enough—as hard as you hold
onto reality, the truth is seldom simple.

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 75 journals and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her chapbook The Unknowable Mystery of Other People is forthcoming from the Poetry Box. She is also the author of Personal Astronomy, When You Escape, Insectomania, and Arithmetic and other verses, as well as the editor of a poetry anthology, Joys of the Table.

CHARLOTTESVILLE ECLIPSE

by Sally Zakariya

Messages are left on a chalkboard in Charlottesville on Aug. 10, 2018. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters via The Washington Post)

The light went out that week.

A violent march, a loathsome flag
a stunning show of moral blindness
and then the sun itself went out
hiding its light, ashamed to see
such darkness in the world.

Closing its fiery eye, the sun shut out
the hate, the taunts, the torches
the brutality and bigotry
the disregard of justice.

Earth turned, the moon moved on
along its cosmic path, and sunlight
shone once more. And now another
year, another march. But the light
of reason still has not returned.

Sally Zakariya’s Pushcart Prize-nominated poetry has appeared in 70 print and online journals. She is the author of When You Escape (Five Oaks Press, 2016), Insectomania (2013) and Arithmetic (2011), and the editor of Joys of the Table (2015). Her chapbook Personal Astronomy is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

DC APRIL '68

by Sally Zakariya

Front pages of The Washington Post, April 5 (left) and April 6, 1968, during the riots following Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. (The Washington Post)

I was there when the city burned
smug-safe in white girl invulnerability
watching the angry smoke rise
over 14th St., hearing the sirens blare.
Mother wanted me to leave but
D.C. was my city too. Evenings
I’d walk home up 18th St.
with my black boyfriend
in time to meet the curfew
the acrid smell of tear gas
clutching at our throats.
And then we’d stop and kiss
good-night as soldiers watched.
It felt like a small victory
proof that it would all come right
but in my heart I knew
some dark veil had been lifted
some page turned and we
could never close our eyes
again to the cold facts
of what my people
had done to his.

Sally Zakariya’s Pushcart Prize-nominated poetry has appeared in some 70 print and online journals. She is the author, most recently, of When You Escape (Five Oaks Press, 2016), as well as Insectomania (2013) and Arithmetic and other verses (2011), and the editor of Joys of the Table (2015). Her chapbook Personal Astronomy is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

EARTH LIGHTS

by Sally Zakariya

Artist's Conception of the Humanity Star from Cumbrian Sky.

Rocket Lab Just Launched a Disco Ball into Orbit—

And It Could Be the Brightest Star in the Sky 

—Newsweek, January 25, 2018

In the Big War, I’m told,
they turned off all the lights
at night to fool the bombers

But now earth lights shine
out to space, tracked day
and night by some celestial
bird circling with a camera
tracing longitude and latitude
orbit by orbit, building a map
of where we light up, where
we outshine the stars at night

Our lights spill out like dirty
wash water from a pail
across a shiny clean floor
and now someone launched
a fake star into the sky—a
disco ball that will reflect
the sun’s rays back to earth

Humanity Star the makers call
their sparkling orb, and just like
the humans it was named for
this flashing star pollutes
the heavens, graffiti in the sky

Sally Zakariya’s Pushcart Prize-nominated poetry has appeared in some 70 print and online journals and won prizes from Poetry Virginia and the Virginia Writers Club. She is the author, most recently, of When You Escape (Five Oaks Press, 2016), as well as Insectomania (2013) and Arithmetic and Other Verses (2011), and the editor of a poetry anthology Joys of the Table (2015). A former magazine editor, Zakariya lives in Arlington with her husband and two cats.

LOVING V. VIRGINIA 1967

by Sally Zakariya




The case hit home for me—
Virginia born and bred, Love
is my middle name, chosen Southern
style for the great-great-somebody
who rode to college in a boxcar
through Confederate lines bringing
her piano and her favorite slave

Virginia Is for Lovers the slogan says
but only certain lovers in those days
certainly not me and the black man
I lived with way back when

A hundred years plus four it took
for marriage to catch up
with Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation
for a suffering nation to bind
this one heart-deep wound—
at least to make a start

I love Virginia’s hills and valleys
its rich red earth where blood
of black and white is mingled
where black and white lie
equal under headstones
but there’s still healing to be done
one nation divided
      still wounded
            still bleeding

Sally Zakariya’s poems have appeared in 60-some print and online journals. She is the author, most recently, of When You Escape (Five Oaks Press, 2016), as well as Insectomania (2013) and Arithmetic and other verses (2011); and the editor of the poetry anthology Joys of the Table (2015).