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PURVI SHAH A new garden, her hair supplanted In my mother's time, I pin her hair. The comb flutters through strands, my hands awkward-like, grasping to clasp it all together. "No," she whispers, "Just pull up and back. No comb." She is teaching me how to conserve each hair, how to keep each root intact. I am learning how to care for hair, how to moderate a firm grip wi± gentleness. "You used to have such beautiful, full, hair," she sighs. "So young." She sees herselfin me, fated victim ofAmerican chill. Should I have seeded our heads with that home's heat, fertilized our scalps with oil, and more oil, so thatwe could have swept it all into a braid, three twists ofdead straw woven into one? We would have unloosed this plait in the dusky wind, a black curtain shivering with unexpelled breath. IfI had a thousand roses, I would create a garden in the air; I would plant unthorned buds in your head, and during the dancing season, you would be a halo, new growth glistening black, red, yellow, white. [Meridians:Jeminism, race, transnationalism 2003, vol. 3, no. 2, p. 52]©2003 by Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved. 52 PURVI SHAH Plain Song (for Cami) The girl can't chart a graph given a point and a slope or produce an essay expounding on Cannibal's symbolic name, but she can cup her hands and make sound fly through the cave ofher wrists, lips pressed to her knuckles. She blows a morning greeting, flips to a coyote call, notes rising to symphonic, air vibrating, fingers fluttering. [Meridians:Jeminism, race, transnationalism 2003, vol. 3, no. 2, p. 53]©2003 by Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved. 53 PURVI SHAH ??? memories ofmidnight miracles (for Pinru on becoming a wife. Mintu) "Dear sister Shahrazad, tell us one ofyourtales ofmaruels so that the rest ofthe niflht may pass delightfully." ? Sister I called you to spin stories like a carpet hooked from written yarns suspense hung among us amidst the music ofyour voice the threat ofthe leaving night the visions offading dye Legends we linked together sea across sea a stitch ofwords spliced from two languages members ofthe same family separated along grim linesbooming sounds too painful to simply hear [Meridians:Jeminism, race, transnationalism 2003, vol. 3, no. 2, p. 54-6]©2003 by Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved. 54 p III Mirror mine you weave my backwards reflections but now the silent image vanishes from the center the songs ofour veils mangled in a necklace singular and circular knotting through marriage Here you cut apart from me faraway as a muezzin is from its Beholden but I feltyour prophecies cross through me central the web ofthread wonder calling to capture love Together we survived stillborn nights alone I lie unexpected will he beatyou singe your soul a fire stone you crazy in love slice your head quick as snake shuttles? Fog is his face bearded by anger? is his hair swaddled in a turban to captivate the pain 101 MEMORIES OF MIDNIGHT MIRACLES 55 coarsely scribed in the language ofedicts and commands Not our sensual marvels IV Sister, did you close the stories because you thought I ceased to listen? Were your lungs scraped silent from the rush ofair always needling scores? ? Compose rugged sailors swimming among the delicate tapestries ofprincesses and princes preying on people poor unrefined as stalked sugar naked in a fertile field where steeds ofsteel float loving freestones eaten for food. Mark my words: thieves in forties may steal silk but the doors do not shut in silences, only neverending yarns. VI As the village prepares to take you to feast I phrase a pristine shroud over my heart and on its fringes inscribe the diamonds ofyour breath in perfect syllables ragged and rich with brilliance: a newspun life. 56PURVI SHAH ...

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