Audio

Excerpts from "Stories of Apples and Bellies"

Letters from Home
                           my prophesy

Dear sweet bouquet boy,
As a child, I learned to recognize nightmares
so I could wake quickly.
The trick is to look for your feet.
If you know the ground you stand on,
you are awake enough to escape.

I have been searching for the trick out of this one
like the off button on the TV remote,
but the landscape has changed, and I am stuck
in a daily lineup of exhausted newsmen.
They broadcast into the living room, uninvited,
announcing our inevitable win.

Dear habibi,
I have long stopped asking which ‘we’ includes me.
I remind myself:
this time, the white faces
are not the enemy.
But we keep your picture
by the phone, and the skin of your cheeks
(a soft-smiling target)
rises from the gray-green collar.

Dear fear-maker,
After two weeks,
the mailman gave up.
He adds each day’s envelopes to the pile
on the porch. The dog has begun fetching
it for us, a few pieces at a time.
She looks confused when your mother
doesn’t say thank you.

Dear heart-beater,
When she sleeps, your mother makes a nest of the sheets
so I cannot touch her.
She never used to stay up past ten,
but some nights I find her awake
in your bedroom.
She does not pray.
She stands in the perfect squares
of window-cut light,
whispering letters to the mailman in the moon, negotiating their safe passage:

please,
make sure you find him on your next trip.

Dear middle child,
Your sister became the first ninth-grade girl
to be suspended for fighting in school.
The report said the other girl started it.

Dear bearer of my father’s name,
Your grandmother gave birth on three battlegrounds.
My sisters were born in Baghdad and Jerusalem.
I arrived in Tehran, just before we had to leave.
I never thought my children would grow up under that side of the sun,
toughen their feet on the sand without shoes,
never wanted them to know what it means to run
from anyone.
My son,
do the other soldiers know
you come from a family
where the men kiss
each other on both cheeks?

Do you remember the words I taught you?
Helu, I bet you remember,
palm open towards your grandmother. Candy.
I should have taught you more.

Dear traveler,
Tell me how sand feels under boot soles.
Take pictures of your footsteps before
the wind comes through. Send them to me
so I know you’ve arrived.
Maybe I’ll know where you are by the color of the ground.
If I recognize it, I promise I will wake us up.

Creator
               from G-d to Adam

Do you remember our last
lesson in the garden?
I was teaching you how to distinguish
the weeds from the flowers, kneeling
over you in the dirt, watching your
face as you tugged
each stray plant from the ground. You
looked horrified, as if I was asking you
to tear babies from their mothers.
When I told you this, your voice cracked
as you asked, “But aren’t you?”

I know the pain of separation.
When I ask myself which part was the hardest,
I think of how I swallowed my tears
when I drew the line
between ocean and sky
and watched as the raindrops kissed them goodbye.
I couldn’t keep my hands
from shaking when I lifted South America out of Africa’s
arms and carried her across the water,
while she sobbed into my shoulder.
I still can’t watch the tide
as it rises towards the beckoning moon,
wishing only to hold her one more time.

When I was finished,
my unconvinced eyes took
in the strange and unfamiliar world before me,
and I told myself it was good, it was good, it was…good

My first real creation was that lie.

I couldn’t tell you this here.
This was the one place I thought
I’d done it perfectly. Every flower,
every tree, every stone was for you,
even before I knew you.

You were an accident.
An unexpected result
of an unexpected pleasure.
After five miserable days,
I was ready to quit, but I found myself
with clay in my hands, like
an unspoken invitation to play awhile. So I did.

While my hands worked and collected thick coats of cracking clay,
I began to think the way every potter does,
wondering what my creation would be able to hold.

I kneaded poetry into your veins,
as vital as the beat I pounded into your heart,
or the tongue I molded into your mouth,
but on your shoulders, I wedged the burden I needed to share.
I couldn’t be responsible
for every distinction,
so I taught you how to pull weeds from flowers,
but you learned to cry for the weeds on your own.

I tried to teach you:
you, too, are a creator.
And: without you, nothing matters.

It’s taken me so long to realize
how much I missed our lessons in the garden,
and you have every right to ignore me
but
I offer you this: you were right about the weeds.