Poetry

Because my grandmother is deadbut because when she lived she favored this place,I too have crossed the rutted roadand come to Mohanraj Jewellers.At seven on a Sunday evening I could wire cash or purchase rubies.I could change my dollars for a packet of bills the size of a grown      man’s shoe—enough to buy shoes for…

Everything’s a window the professor told my class,and I thought about breaking that glass, or shuttingthe curtains, or better yet opening those windowsand climbing out into the snowy world beyond.He said fashioning windows is the only waywe can make sense of what we see, so evenas I walked off through that snow I must have…

My mother started writing essays in English,essays with wrong punctuation, wrong tenses,wrong spacing wrong spelling,with Arabic terms too, typed in English(and a French accent)when she cannot findthe translation for…mina.In her e-mail she tells me she’s very “exited” about this—her American teacher loves her ideas,even in her bad English.Their topic this week is “Now and Then,”the…

Somewhere there is order,a multiverse of order.I could havesewed that rip in the liningwith special strong thread,washed pillows for the refugees,cut new gardenias to replacethe yellowed blouses collapsedin the vase, called someone,hoping they’d be happyto hear from me. I could have faced the hard timewith the fortitude of my tribe,planted elephant garlic,loved you through this…

To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboatcomes slowly out and then goes back is truly worthall the years of sorrow that are to come.                         —Jack Gilbert, “A Brief for the Defense” I’m here, listening to the sound of oarsdipping and dripping while they pull across the sound,and, it’s true,…

I am successfully cupping fireflies with my make believe hand.I am admiring the invisible irises I forgot to plant last November.I actually see the tie-dye evolution of autumn leaves for the first time My son said after we left the hospice where my mother would beA ghost before we ever saw her again. A Candy…

Contrails crisscrossing overhead,spreading puff by fading puffinto each instant of the past…dull notes, antiphonal clouds lined outagainst the blue, arpeggiosdown that road as faras we can hope to go…                                            The dishran away with the…

She was the stain in the teacup   that spread up toward the handle.She was the handle that snapped   off the hairbrush, andShe was the hairbrush he tossed   onto the fire, andShe was the fire he carried   each day in his pipe. She was the pipe the bath water   rode to the river, andShe was the river where they   boarded the boat…

That it was fine linen flawlessly stitched,            as silken as new skin. That it was the color of ivory or an old book’s pages            left blank in the front. In the beginning shape of the letter A, it made            a long A sound. With lace. Because she was heard to say it had been passed           …