Translated from the Brazilian Portuguese by Ellen Doré Watson I inherited this house,which has one room I avoid,paralyzed by its icy air.I keep to a smaller spacewhere virtues and laughter,even a few seeds of joy remainintact, retain some life.But when I behold the massive entryway,I stiffen—smiling devil fearhas me in his lap:“Child, you’re very sick,let…
Double golden shovel on a line from Vera Nazarian’s Dreams of the Compass Rose In the throes of my 41st fatherless Tuesday, I am strapped deep and down inthe gut of a turbulent Boeing—keyboarding, wrestling dactyls. I wonder if thedesert, a hundred grandiose death-drops below me, is still that celluloid desert,the gilt murderer, the only…
Dear L, It’s 3:19 a.m. I just fed the baby while my sonscreamed, I want to sleepin your bed! We don’t let him until the sun wakes up, that’s the rule. The sunis still in its bed, we explain. He counters, But I’ll be really quiet. I promise. His plea,I just want to hug Mama and Papa. Who wants to be alone in the dark, L?…
In Lahore, a season of smog set in with the new year. Mornings became a milky haze, swirled through with a fistful of turmeric. In this haze, my cousins Shams and Qamar crouched on the lawn, transplanting marigolds into beds of dried dung and river loam while my uncle shouted instructions from his wheelchair. I…
I loved an addict once & the tactile universe—sometimes my hands still shake uncontrollably. I would like to be inhabited at regular intervalsmeasured by sundials. Anyone can be a place in America: a moving target, a strip of glisteningsand, a clitoral appendage, a systematic reshuffling of parts. My own beauty mirrored in storefronts& flawed metaphors:…
I am a child of the seabut I’ve always lived by rivers they’re never the samewhen the moon is full I stop in wonder when winter comes I crawl in my caveI used to love the city its buildings and clamor now I’d rather walk in the woodsand bathe in the breath of trees the…
In Westwood, California, our professor,whose name was, he told us proudly,Yiddish for fucker, careened through Merrill.Goethehaus I pronounced ‘goathouse’and the professor’s modusoperandi was startled. Farnoosh scrawledit wasn’t meon our copies of ‘Lost in Translation.’Who is Gunmoll Jean? We were too shyto ask. But she did. Lee was all baseball.Every verb was nude, and every girl…
Long agopeople made gods of palm datesand prayed to them.But once they got so hungry,they ate their gods—then wandered, still hungryand lonely, in search of succor.Finally, these peopleconceived the ideaof worshipping godsas ghosts in machines—inedible gods of metal,stainless, perfect, and tireless,except that when they run out of energy,they look around forhumans to consume.
I will die one day in this landand you will fly back a single bar of mepacked in dry ice.The airport dogs will sniff the carouselfor traces of live matterand the cacao-nutty smell will send them whimpering.Make sure I’m conched right:neither too gritty nor too emulsified,tempered properlyso I’m not laced in sugar bloom. The departed will attend…
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