Feeling Kind Of Sexy...

 

One Night Stand - A Love Poem

He fell down the stairs in my apartment tonight,

because the lights were off and all he could see

was his own reflection in the mirror across

from the stairs. I thought it was the way to the

bathroom, he says, hopping his way

back into my room. 

You would know where the bathroom is.

You would have things in my bathroom.

A toothbrush, the pages of my magazines

folded where you think the girls are hot.

A special mirror to see things closely with.

You would have your own shelf filled with

the floss you forget to use.

His pain is not turning me on. His pain makes it difficult to enjoy

any of this. And now he’s next to me in this bed

where you used to sleep, where you used to put your

hand on my belly and tell me you wanted to plant things in there.

He’s naked under my covers with

an aching knee. Painful, I’m sure, but he just won’t shut up

about it. I start touching him so he will, below the waist where

it counts, and he gets quiet. But it doesn’t feel right

in my hand. And when I kiss behind his ear, he doesn’t

seem to like it the way you do, keeps trying to pull me towards

his mouth. And all the time I want to taste the crystal salts

of your skin again, like being pulled under a wave and my feet

not touching anything, to know that you keep

a space for me in your life, maybe even the size of the

crescent moon of a clipped finger nail, or perhaps a whole

finger, or one of your hands, just in case things are

different one day, just in case people do change and you

think of planting things again.

But this guy. This guy whose name keeps

slipping my mind, like a bar of leftover soap,

all tangled up with hair, and his aching knee,

his horribly aching knee, it all feels a little, a little unlike

you. You’ve never broken a bone. Never twisted any

part of yourself.

And I think for a second what the point

of all this is. If only to feel loved

for just one night? If only to write even one poem?

Look At These...

When Long Beards Meant Patience - An Experiment In Words

Sun. Stronger than Los Angeles. Hot and wet in Cordoba. Still the gypsies. They wear thick layers. No matter how rosy their babies cheeks get. They ask for dollars. We give coins. No. Dollars. They say. They are greedy. We learn to give nothing. To ignore. Their voices. We live here now. We learn like locals. To not find sorrow in such pleas. Tea houses are of the past. Kept on cobblestone streets. When the Muslims. The Jews. The Christians. Lived here in peace. 500, 000 inhabitants in the latter half of the tenth century. Then most populated city in Europe. Perhaps the world. Time when learning from each other took place. Before bus bombs. Midnight raids. Before long beards were something to be afraid of. When they meant wisdom. Being a patient man. Over past few years over 3,000 immigrants have died en route to Spain. More security systems. They take more dangerous routes now. 

Water pipes. Hookah. Shishah. Nargeela. Pots of tea. Refilled by our Morrocan friend. Asden. Suenos de Andalucia. Like a dream. The tea relaxes us. Makes the tiles on the walls more blue. Seem closer to our faces. Makes everything seem like a dream. I ask him in nervous Spanish. Where I can find hashish. He smiles with small teeth. Says here. Asian girl from San Diego. In my program. Tells us little kids pull eyes with their fingers when they pass her on the streets. They say. Chino. Chino. Her family is from Thailand.

The mullet is back. Even handsome men. With mullets turn ugly. Cold beer. Olives in a bowl. Afternoon snack. Half of non EU immigrants in Andalucia from Morocco. The Moroccans sell scarves in the plaza. One looks like my dad. Has same round belly. Jolly smile. He tells me he’ll give me a discount. Only if I buy two. I buy three. Mostly for the discount. Simpsons in Spanish. Same stories. Voices higher pitched though. Throws everything off a little. We watch this every day over lunch. Maria is too young to be my mother. But here she is. Making me ham and cheese sandwiches. Frying everything. Re-using grease. As if something precious. There are no vegetables in this house. Today instead of Simpsons. A family stands on a roof. A neighborhood sinking in New Orleans. 

            Asden invites us over to his house. Further than where we usually go. No cab will take us. We take the bus. He wears a crisp dress shirt. A table covered. Feta cheese. Warm pita bread. Chorizo. Hummus. Dates. A bowl of grapes. He’s taken his time with this. I eat the feta with fingers. Think of my mom. Her loss of appetite. How many more months of chemo. Windows open for more air. Asden rolls hashish joints. Four of them. Passes them around our circle of five. Almost one for each of us. As soon as one leaves my hand. Another arrives. Feels like we are sitting for too long. Everyone feels like their own planet. Made of different things. Far away from me. My planet. Through the windows a loud flapping noise. Three of them. Too loud to be birds. We duck. Run into the other room. Watch Asden hit blurred black with pillows. He looks like a warrior. They fly back out. He closes the window. Bats he says. Just bats.

More things fried. Still the family stands on the roof. Someone videotaping this. Someone watching this close enough to help. Someone can show us this. Someone can get  higher ratings because of this. But without touching this family’s planet. Someone can put their hands out and reach. But doesn’t. Everything is covered in water. 

Once, Once

Once, she said this hot sun

hit her head so hard, fired up

all the molecules inside of her,

all it did was make her think love.

Once, she wrote a poem about

this folded neatly

in an envelope she sealed

with her saliva for him, all

the time wishing it was a kiss.

Once, there was a kiss,

but also there was nothing.

Once, before everything was,

the sun conversed with the still

black moon, wondering what lonely

means, if life could exist

under such a pitch black night.

The sun said, I will pour

everything into you, so when I leave

this place you will not forget what

light feels like, you will not forget

my hot lava love.

And so there was a marriage,

With candles everywhere, stars really,

no minister or witness to clap or to cry,

the sun’s bright arms stretching, wrapping

itself around the dark moon, and

only the Earth, watching, waiting

for a kiss between the two.

Once, not too long after,

the moon feel in love with

the pull of the ocean.

Once, he got an envelope, opened wet

edges, read words, ate them up

like expensive oranges.

Once, love grew forth from a mouth

like a tree with too many leaves,

covered all things like a warm mother’s hand.

Fly, Howl, Love : A Tribute To The Life Of Forugh Farrokhzad *

Our house was at the end of an alley,

at the end of all things it seemed

when we were little girls living

among the shadows of

the walls,

the trees bearing figs, sour

cherries.

And Forugh, always with her notebook,

filling those pages with what?

It seemed so big in her small hands then,

that notebook,

as if she herself could fit inside those pages.

She would climb trees,

hop on walls,

howl like a wolf,

fight with boys she would rather have

been loving.

She put her arms out one moonless night,

pretended to be an airplane, to be the entire sky,

and I watched from the dull pond, home

to the red goldfish and brown frogs,

because my eyes were stuck on her.

Everyone’s eyes were stuck on her.

At sixteen,

when she married, moved to a city named

after a song,

she found something like freedom

in plucked eyebrows,

eyes lined thick with black,

in painted lips red,

and short, short skirts.

But more than that

it was perhaps her disheveled hair,

those ink stained hands

as blue as oceans on a map,

taking over the entire earth it would seem with

such small hands.

Holding a paper that had been folded and

squeezed between her fingers

for days, years, her entire life

as she walked into that editor’s office.

They would call her a poetess,

because poet would mean

being a woman didn’t matter.

And it always matters.

And even in such freedom,

she lost him.

An unfit mother they proclaimed,

a whore making love to all the world

with her words.

I have sinned a rapturous sin

in a warm enflamed embrace.

Sinned in a pair of vindictive hands,

arms violent and ablaze.

When someone wants to reach the heart

of this Earth,

it becomes impossible

to not always do just this.

I want to hang my heart like

A ripe fruit

On every branch of every tree.

Even in the beginning, even on

that fig tree at the end of the alley,

at the end of all things,

she hung it there too.

It still sways in the damp air

as if no one is watching.

There is no box large enough to hold

the way a woman

sees a naked body,

to hold such small hands,

her hands, with those large blue inked oceans

like true, replenished skin.

I will not speak of death,

of cold lips,

and the movement of machines,

of skin and bone touching concrete loud enough for

all to hear.

But I will say that always, always at the center of it,

even by that dull pond as I watched her write,

fly, howl, it was always love.

Yes, so love begins,

and though the road’s end is out of sight

I do not think of the end

for it is the loving I so love.           

She was buried under the snow.

Perhaps the truth was those two young hands

those young hands

buried beneath the snow-

and in the coming year when spring mates with sky behind the window,

fountains of green saplings, will erupt-

saplings that bloom, beloved, my truest friend.

*Based on a “A Brief Biography” in Sin-Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad      

  translated by Sholeh Wolpe