The Return
I return to my city,
search in the cafe of La Alameda,
the young hand holding a wine glass,
his gaze distant and profound.
I return to my city
where every adolescent resembles
the one I knew so well but never knew,
nor understood the consuming flame
burning his wings of moth,
the mystery of strings
holding his grasshopper legs
propelled by fire.
I return to my city,
cross a whole ocean to hear
his voice in the evening news,
a local station discussing his work,
those documentaries of life in Africa,
savannah, desert, lakes, wilderness,
his love for open skies, and I remember
exactly when those fraying strings were cut
when
I said, I couldn’t be sure,
perhaps
it wasn’t love, but plain desire,
and he said, desire is never plain.
Previously Published at Live Encounters
The Phone Call
I
The music, a crying guitar
much like an infected violin
chews leaves blown by winter,
my heart pounded by absence
never expected again to palpitate
clean like a new whistle taken out
of its wrapping at the store.
II
The phone rings to that song
we used to dance to by the sea.
The ghost of your voice from abroad
shakes me out of my incantations,
resurrects embers from long dead ashes.
I know the clear skin of yesteryears,
strong thighs, and certain softness
surrounding those forest green eyes
form residues of memories now
stiff with coldness and distance.
III
I search for a photograph as we speak
to match the face to the vulnerable voice
of a Peter Pan slow to grow to his potential.
You’re famous now, and a different voice
implores forgiveness through air waves
since cables too are gone, and nothing
ties us together anymore.
Previously Published at Live Encounters
Letter to My Iranian Lover
How
City Living Changes Us
In the old days, voices connected by wire
Now waves carry them unbounded
To our palms, no strings attached
Floating just like our lives
In a limbo of our doing.
I think of seagulls’ long calls
Waiting for the sun to warm
Tail and wing to fly away
Early in the morning.
You recognize the behavior.
I picture you as a tolling bell
Calling the faithful to Mass
More than the muezzin of youth
Forgotten so effortlessly.
Move away, watch structures crumble
Under foreign pressures,
Non halal food, reshaped ideology,
Those openly inviting women
Exactly like open face sandwiches
At Grenouille’s near the Sacré Coeur.
Yesterday I visited your mother
Old now, opaque film interferes
With her field of vision, a common experience.
My heart flares up like fireworks knowing
I may be the one weeping when she dies.
I won’t join you in Paris,
You’ll never return to our blue beaches,
The Madrassa, Ibrahim’s workshops.
Nor walk by fruit stalls showing their colors,
The one thing you have not shown me.
Previously Published at Panoply
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