Badriya
Perhaps my father's name will pass on extra-genetic traits
that will allow her fingers to be linguists,
or call the cat that tore the tongues from our faces
and left us a site for reconstruction.
Perhaps I will carry her in the folds of my pockets,
the full moon rising on the sound of horse hair in the wind.
But it's likely I'll feed her as my mother did me,
feasting on founding fathers and Great Expectations,
though the cat remains curled in the corners of our mouths
waiting for a thoughtless sigh or a Please pass the butter.
So together we dangle among our twin ribs,
belonging, at the moment, only to each other.
A Taste of Home
I.
My eardrums fought against the pressure change,
everyone exhaled and the wings shuddered
open. The engine's hollow roar dissolved
and the lights ticked on.
II.
Not-my-bags trundled endlessly before
my mechanical muscles reached for one they
recognized and swung its familiar bulk
to smash on the cart.
III. Shway shway! Fee combyutar dakhil, hajji!
The words come only after I say them -
like half-formed pearls oozing and popping at
the back of my throat.
IV.
This place feels mushy and incoherent
like old food re-found behind molars,
but it tastes like my bedsheets and smells like
something left behind.
Mindfulness in a Minefield
When you are breathing, know that you are breathing.
You expand your lungs and fill them with dust.
When you are walking, know that you are walking.
In a sterile room your sister is teething,
the lobby adjacent is all char and rust.
when you are breathing, know that you are breathing.
On a slick poster two children are talking
in a desert minefield: "You must adjust
when you are walking." Know that you are walking.
Across the lot, the refinery, burning,
makes your mother look at your birdcage bust
as you are breathing. Know that you are breathing.
You dream you are a lion hoarsely roaring
backwards. Breathe dust, walk fire. You learn not to trust
when you are walking, know that you are walking.
Faint memories, sporadic, murky dregs cling
to the sides of your skull. You are the stillest
when you are breathing. Know that you are breathing
when you are walking. Know that you are walking.
Last night I got to hang out with this man at a bar, and then he came to my apartment and ate one of my cupcakes. YAY.
A Primer
by Bob Hicok
I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go
to be in Michigan. The right hand of America
waving from maps or the left
pressing into clay a mold to take home
from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan
forty-three years. The state bird
is a chained factory gate. The state flower
is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical
though it is merely cold and deep as truth.
A Midwesterner can use the word “truth,”
can sincerely use the word “sincere.”
In truth the Midwest is not mid or west.
When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.
There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life
goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,
which we’re not getting along with
on account of the Towers as I pass.
Then Ohio goes corn corn corn
billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget
how to be from Michigan when you’re from Michigan.
It’s like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.
The Upper Peninsula is a spare state
in case Michigan goes flat. I live now
in Virginia, which has no backup plan
but is named the same as my mother,
I live in my mother again, which is creepy
but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,
suddenly there’s a pouch like marsupials
are needed. The state joy is spring.
“Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball”
is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,
when February hasn’t ended. February
is thirteen months long in Michigan.
We are a people who by February
want to kill the sky for being so gray
and angry at us. “What did we do?”
is the state motto. There’s a day in May
when we’re all tumblers, gymnastics
is everywhere, and daffodils are asked
by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes
with a daffodil, you know where he’s from.
In this way I have given you a primer.
Let us all be from somewhere.
Let us tell each other everything we can.
