As A Woman Collects Leaves, and: Spring Moths, and: Whirl, and: July Street, and: Stillness, and: At The Eastern Market: Asiatic Lilies, and: The Treachery of Dream, and: Storks to Ouarzazate, and: African America
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- As A Woman Collects Leaves, and: Spring Moths*, and: Whirl, and: July Street, and: Stillness, and: At The Eastern Market: Asiatic Lilies, and: The Treachery of Dream*, and: Storks to Ouarzazate, and: African America
AS A WOMAN COLLECTS LEAVES
You stand there in front of me.Blood stains your clothes.You wait for something to showin my face something of judgment
but there is nothing there at leastnothing you can discern.I am happy to see youafter these months away.
The season pressed into leaves golden.What do I know of tradition?For me the burden of anything ancientis weightless something dissolved
in saltwater thinned in wind above ships.The knife to neck inflicts a geyser.A dark eye dims.It is over you say.
I expected more hostility.The sheep’s need to remain.Its bliss for pasture electric through veins.But so calm to ground the head
pulled back as a woman collects leaves.What happened to the pain you felt?That animal’s pain volatile in you.That gentleness to fur your hands there.
Perhaps this is your violence.The kind you refuse to humans too afraidto show them not knowing how to getaway with it vengeance aloof scary. [End Page 321]
Women burn hair from its face.Hack its cooked skull in half.Curled horns sawed charred.You pull the kidneys from carcass.
They are two purple jewelsstill warm still shimmering.You skewer these.Hold over smoking
alder with the liver.You and I eat themwith bread before the heartis salted dusted with cumin.
My heart beats.My heart pumps.My heart is muscleas is the sheep’s in my mouth.
In my mouth this heart is supple spiced.I am the same killer.The same killer withoutcustom as a woman collects leaves. [End Page 322]
SPRING MOTHS*
A green sky is an omen of leaves.The grandeur of beliefs where
cathedrals are as tall as minarets.What glides through sky?
What cyclopic beings bend amongconsecrated protrusions anemic palms frail
as kingdom frail as those leaving on boats?Silent prayer on boats made of paper wood
slats bruised with corroding nails.Women watch wait worry.
What will water wage?What will render us silent even though we speak?
Barbed wire across lips teeth caged eelstwisting through throats.
The dead are among us.We reach for them with scarlet hands.
The moon again.Its glow is sonic over ocean the city’s
sallow buildings.It is spring when we explode to moths.
The dust like gunpowder works of fireyet nothing burns. [End Page 333]
WHIRL
Whirl whirl red dust.
Whirl tall to sky less than cobalt.Whirl into funnels layers of air.Among houses white with sun whirl.As if Sufi whirl.Whirl a world wrecked.
A trance no land no country whirl.Whirl to towers loose.The next wonder the coming whirl.Whirl even if speculative.Whirl with might maybe.
Whirl whirl the dust red.
Whirl it all round.Wonder wildly whirl.Whirl wicked whimsy.Whirl the black sheep to a black field.Whirl a vision fired yet clear.
Whirl with me.Whirl debris green.Wind a howl whirl.Whirl dissipation.Whirl it all atomless.
Whirl whirl red dust. [End Page 332]
JULY STREET
Ahmed walks with his sister on July Streetsearching for shoes beige leather something on July Street.
Plastic strings of light the strange flashing the aggressionof merchants their titanic insistence on July Street.
This day is supposed to be celebratory sadnessfor another time yet there must be cynics on July Street.
A djinn combs his hair while looking at Ahmedbut doesn’t understand his solace on July Street.
His lips are smoke the rest of him fire;he wants to drop serpents on July Street.
The hijab his sister wears won’t protect from suchcold coils; she sees a woman in sequins on July Street.
Her brother hears yelling hears their father wakingfamished even though meat sizzles on July Street.
The store they enter is filled with ferocious men;shoes shine phosphorescently the djinn is dazzled on July Street.
The...
