his vocabulary, coming to a new world,
for safety and rescue. Please Madame, my name is Abdul,
this is my family, my brother, my sister, I am happy
to know you.
Invitation to the NSA
Feel free to scrutinize my messages. Welcome. Have fun fanning through my private thoughts on drones, the Israeli Army chopping down olive trees, endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, horrific from the get-go, and we told you so, but no one listened because there was a lot of money and oomph in it, so feel free to listen now. Bombs have no mothers. That is an insult to mothers. See what I think about Bashar-al-Assad vs. the children of Syria, pass it on, please, or weapons in general, the George W. Bush library in Dallas which I refused to drive my mother past. I like the sense of you looking over our shoulders, lifting up the skirts of our pages, peering under my fury at how you forget Palestine again and again, forget the humble people there, never calling them the victimized innocents as you call others. You forget your promises, forget religion, Thou Shalt Not Kill, and yet you kill, in so many ways, so what do we care? You might as well see what we say.
Double Peace
For Yehuda Amichai
“If I try to be like him, who will be like me?”—Yiddish proverb
Not for him and his people alone
but for all who loved that rocky land
Everybodyeverybodysing it!
No chosen and unchosen but everybody chosen
Sing it!
All families living under tiled rooftops
Or flat roofs with strung clotheslines
T-shirtsbedsheetsflags of surrender
I show you my clothI live the way you live
All the cousinssecond cousins
extra cousinsunknown cousins
No choiceeveryone a cousin
peace better than hurtful moves
betterbettersing it!
Not rain that fell on a few houses only
Not sun that shone on a few favored yards
Not air in small containers only for some lungs
Double peace multiplied
Outsideinsideevery ancient space
every sleek new room with tall windows
Peace for sheep and goats grazing in meadows
(They already have it)
Peace for buckets waiting on doorsteps
Peace in brown eggs lined on counters waiting to be
cracked
Peace in skillets and spatulas
We met at the cornerwent to his home for
breakfast
He said, I would never have taken your father’s
home!
I could never have lived in a stolen Arab home!
The great voice of the Jewish people said this to
my face
our conversation
where streets converged
Break the Worry Cocoon
“Take them, use them, I beg you to travel.”
—Samih al-Qasim, from “Travel Tickets”
To live with what we are given—
graciously, as if our windows open wide as our neighbors’, as if there weren’t insult at every turn.
How did you do that?
“. . . if social justice will be victorious in all the world . . . I don’t care who will remember me or my poems.”
You sprang from the earth same way everyone does,
from the soil of your parents, the small bed and hopeful song.
Were pressed along through a century
that didn’t honor your people,
who washed their faces anyway,
stitched the dresses, buttoned shirts.
“. . . travel tickets . . . one to peace . . .
one to the fields and the rain, and one to the
conscience of humankind . . .”
How did you survive so much hurt and remain gracious,
finding words to mark the shapes
of grief, how did you believe,
then and forever, breaking out
of the endless worry cocoon,
something better might come your people’s way?
The Tent
When did hordes of sentences start
beginning with So—
as if everything were always pending,
leaning on what came before.
What can you expect?
Loneliness everywhere, entertained or kept in storage.
So you felt anxious to be alone.
Easier to hear, explore a city, room,
mound of hours, no one walking beside you.
Talking to self endlessly, but mostly listening.
This would not be strange.
It would be the tent you slept in.
Waking calmly inside whatever
you had to do would be freedom.
It would be your country.
The men in front of me had whole acres
in their eyes. I could feel them cross, recross each day.
Memory, stitched. History, soothed.
What we do or might prefer to do. Have done.
How we got here. Telling ourselves a story
till it’s compact enough to bear.
Passing the walls, wearing the sky,
the slight bow and rising of trees.
Everything ceaselessly holding us close.
Never cast out without a line of language
to reel us back.
That is what happened, how I got here.
So maybe. One way anyway.
A story was sewn, seed sown,
this was what patriotism meant to me—
to be at home inside my own head long enough
to accept its infinite freedom
and move forward anywhere, to mysteries coming.
Even at night in a desert, temperatures plummet,
billowing tent flaps murmur to one another.
Please Sit Down
For Vera B. Williams
Your mama will have a chair
Everyone will have a chair
There are enough chairs
In the dreams we share
desks with smooth wooden tops
Name cards in calligraphy
cubbyholes under seats
What else might people be given?
When everyone sits calmly in chairs
Numbers march across pages
Letters line up friendly-fashion
Hopefully we might like those letters enough
to shape them into stories
Where have you been before here?
Who did you see?
A woman of sturdy conviction
clear, clear focus
making history with her hands
A garden, a muffin, a world?
Greedy men say “More!” to war
Sitting together telling stories
could change that but who will take the time?
Missiles faster
All our lives to speak of simple things
turns out to be
most complicated
For the Birds
“Why not?”—Dorothy Stafford’s late-life motto
Why aren’t you filling your feeders these days,
my mother asks—the birds are disappointed,
they keep landing on the feeder and flying away
looking sad. And I thought about our lives,
days crammed full of doings—so many messages,
do they feed us or make us fretful?
Maybe the birds are messages
too. But saying what? We watch them landing,
ruffling succulent soft brown layered wings,
wearing snazzy yellow beaks,
and I haul out the sack of seeds.
Bowing Candles
For John O’Donohue
How lonely your house feels, like the abandoned
house of an ancient shepherd, in the far Connemara
meadows.
Though I pictured it white, the outer walls are
muddy brown.
We peer through windows.
Candles on long wooden table
bend over at their waists,
wax softening in sun
bowing to your absence.
Still in shock, as are we. How could your voice be so
alive—then gone?
Nothing boxed or put away—you left unexpectedly.
I feel shy—never having met you but
remembering your graceful handwriting across years of letters—
and what did we say?
Yes of course, take it away, my poem is your poem,
all poems belong to anyone who loves them.
You carried light to tables—long tables
around the world like this wooden one
still waiting here—everyone remembers you—
serving light on plates with place mats.
You wrote about beauty, joy, belonging.
Quickly, someone must move into your house.
Black Car
For Van Morrison
Everyone still resonating, sliding
saxophone, searing plume of joy that lit the hall,
coating gilt ceiling, causing us all
to rise, raise our hands.
What it is to carry a voice like that.
From side stage door to back seat of car.
Crowd still hovering cheers again,
engine zooms into night.
Thank you. Thank you. Pressing the walk button
we fly.
MORE WORLDS
“Many Indians say they live in two worlds, but they actually have to live in more than two worlds. If you live in one world you are pretty much stuck in one place. Right now, I am living in the cab-driving world, the sober world, the Indian world, the art world. The more worlds you live in, the better it is.”
—FRANK BIG BEAR JR., ARTIST
Mountains
Jesse never felt smarter than at age six
the only first grader in a fifth-grade poetry workshop—
when they wrote about their neighborhood
his poem by far the best in the room
and he the first volunteer to stand and read it.
The big kids clapped for him and cheered.
He remembered this at twenty-one
when we crossed paths on Commerce Street.
Hey, hey! Could I ever feel like that again?
It was my Best Day!
Now working two jobstwo kids to support
Yes I think so
Do you read to your kids?
Do you have a library card?
Do you use it?
NoNoNo
Start there, Jesse! You knew the truth
when you were sixthat your street was magical
and full of mountains
though it was utterly flat.
You wrote about the rooster’s songs
and the dogs’ barkingful wonder.
You wrote Who do you think I amamam?
And knew instinctively it was more powerful to say
“am”
three times than one—
You are still that person.
Oh, Say Can You See
I’d like to take Donald Trump to Palestine,
set him free in the streets of Ramallah or Nablus
amidst all the winners who never gave up in sixty-nine years.
They’d like to make their country great again too,
if only their hands weren’t tied by the weapons
our country donates. Let’s talk about who belongs where,
how an immigrant to Israel is treated better than someone
who tended a tree for a hundred years. Who lies?
Let’s talk about lies. Give it a shout! They built a wall
so ugly, kids must dream of flying over,
or burrowing under, and it didn’t solve anything.
I’d wrap a keffiyeh around his head,
tuck some warm falafels into his pockets,
let him wander alleyways and streets,
rubble and hope mixing together,
nothing oversized, no tall towers,
just beautiful life, mint flourishing in a tin can,
schoolgirl in a fresh dress with a ruffle, mom and dad
staring from the windows—Can you see us?
Can you see any of us at all?
Anti-Inaugural
I pledge allegiance
To respect
For every one
Of you
Talking truth
is hard
Staying silent
should be harder
My voting preference?
Every person
In this city
Silence waits
For truth
To break it
You be my president,
I’ll be yours
We have never
paid
Enough attention
yet
Some days
we are
the fallen flower
Abundance!
Nature doesn’t shout.
Be brave
Little things
Still matter most
I Vote for You
For Connor James Nye
You smile at everyone. When lifted, toted,
you hold tightly to shoulder or sleeve.
Gazing curiously, each room, face,
Irish sheep, stuffed puppy.
Dwelling in a current of care,
you know nothing of cruelties people do
to one another.
You did not see the intricate avenues of Aleppo—
tiled ceilings, arching rooms.
The villages of Palestine
could still be neatly terraced in your brain.
When you smile, we might all be
wishing each other well.
When you startle at a loud sound,
await the power of softness
to settle you down. There is no other power
in your world.
Hunger, interest, kicking, joy—carry us there.
If your eyes fall heavily closed,
sweet rescue in the dozing.
What we might remember if we tried much harder.
In your dream no one is a refugee.
Everyone has clean sheets.
Belfast
(For Frankee & Paul)
I’m attached to everything
things that aren’t mine
places that aren’t mine
(nothing is mine)
fingers feeling for a switch in the dark
knowing how a knob turns or sticks
after only two days
click of the lock
attached to swervessurprisenew corners
riding an elevator to the seventh floor of the old
linen mill
meeting artists
simply by knocking on their doors
Tell again—what was all that violence for?
Old BelfastI’m attached to your red brick
peaks & pitchescompact neighborhoods
green slopes behind (they aren’t mine)
haunting yellow cranes at the Titanic shipyard
gray slate stones on the beach
(we could see Scotlandalso not mine
but now I’m so attached to everything
I almost doubled in size)
attached to Stranmillis Roadswans
swiftsrivers
the glorious face of Queen’s University
we could start over
everything over
new worldnew mapnew life
and the baked potato with cheese and red beans
I kept hearing about
there is morethere is morethere is more
Summer
Up late watching TV commercials while waiting for the last quarter of the basketball finals game—it�
��s clear what someone must think Americans want: everything to blow up. Catastrophic explosions, chaos, car chases, mobs of desperate people running from zombies, massive flying robot creatures with their weapons pointed directly at us. It is NOW SUMMER AND WE HAVE MADE THIS MOVIE FOR YOU. OPENING SOON. Even the national capitol features giant flames spilling out of its dome. These commercials will whet the appetites of fellow Americans who, only a few decades ago, were happy with lightning bugs and lemonade. What happened to us?
A Lonely Cup of Coffee
Far preferable
to a sociable cup
which tastes more
of talk
the lonely cup
redolent
rich
ripe
round
blesses
the quiet mouth
Reading Obituaries on the Day
of the Giant Moon
Is it possible to fall in love posthumously with someone’s stunningly mismatched eyebrows
and straight-on gaze?
Kazue’s summary describes her as “a fiery woman even at seventy-three.”
I want to follow her blazing through the streets of
Hokkaido
where she was born and grew up,
then to Texas, where her “beloved husband” died
and “without skipping a beat”
she entered the “food industry.” What does this mean? Where did she cook?
How many beats do we skip every day?
“In lieu of flowers,” writes one of her sons,
“take your mother to dinner or enjoy a good meal
like Kazue would have wanted you to.”
Yesterday we buried fiery Hilda, eighty-six, who made everyone feel loved,
whose red poppies light up City Street each spring.
Did she call the whole world darling? No, just me,
just me.
But at her graveside, everyone else knew her better
than I did.
The neighborhood feels tipped.
Our house may slide into the river
without Hilda here, cozy in her tall rooms,
holding things back.
To Jamyla Bolden of Ferguson, Missouri
Fifty years before you did your homework