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boundary 2 28.1 (2001) 111-112



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Under Flame Trees

Tina Barr

In their electric bed, bumper cars’
curl-of-wire tails spark high in the pavilion.
A man’s voice sings out over the acre
of garden. Over tables moored on raised
terraces birds float in from the flame
trees. Like our mimosas, with thin
leaves, fernlike branches lift and fall,
fan hot color, stretch open
the core of the trunk. The singing voice
speeds up, entreats in Arabic.
Now a waiter collects a glass and a brass
cover that makes a saucer for the mint.

Now the flower seller with her single red
or pink roses wrapped in cellophane cones
goes table to table with her bouquet.
Her gray abaya covers her indoor dress— [End Page 111]
an inch of pink and red shows below the hem.
She has covered her head with a black
scarf, put her abaya over it, so its tapered
point is hidden. I would like to go
from table to table receiving the loose
handshakes that are the custom with women.
The singer’s voice falls under mizmars
and drums, crests over, holds a final note.

I have eaten my macaroni Napoli, a puffed
browned flan of milk, flour, and butter
over hollow noodles the size of trade beads
submerged in tomato, cumin, stems of oregano.
When white globes light up soon, mosquitoes
will follow. Even the waves of the Nile,
whipped up like flutters of wings, smooth over;
a pink dims. I breathe something sweet,
it becomes fruit, then smoke from a shisha,
a husky man puffs. The waterpipe
bubbles as it cools
a smoke from apple-flavored tobacco.

The side of his face is flushed copper,
his curly hair shorn close. He puts
an elbow on the table, leans toward
a young woman, her face framed
inside her scarf, her skin yellowy taupe.
Her feet, crossed at the ankles, show
through stacked sandals. He has touched
her wrist so they must be engaged or married.
The space between their heads seems to waver.
A sweet smoke comes again. Last year,
when a woman like her wore
a knee-length skirt, she was set on fire.

Tina Barr is assistant professor of English at Rhodes College in Memphis, where she directs the creative writing program. Her poems have most recently appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Brilliant Corners, Chelsea, Harvard Review, Louisiana Literature, Southern Review, Southwest Review, and elsewhere. She was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony in June 1999 and 2000, where she worked on a series of poems about Cairo.



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