My Name on His Tongue: Poems

eid

73 eid the day starts with my brother’s drunken slur pouring across thousands of miles and an ocean to wish us eid mubarak while the TV shouts behind him drowns his empty promises (second cousins to those of my father) home sits above the bellybutton below the heart waits for a familiar lilt a certain accent to pry it out of its deep slumber float it to the surface a benign lump at the throat we laugh about his 15-year-old son who drives around Amman with the bass in their SUV thumping across neighborhoods unfamiliar with gangsta rap all it takes is the tiniest unexpected phrase a gentle touch the smell of my grandfather’s shaving cream the wet of sand between my fingers the sweet taste of flat Pepsi to pry it open a giant internal organ with no room to stretch itself 74 in the evening over kifta rice and Scrabble our Syrian friend his Apple Pie wife their red-white-and-blue children constructed American happiness tinged in Islam with a hint of Arabic unleash the ghurba1 I feel it rising, large and fierce, filling me with an evil mood a deep sadness for my tiny son who cannot bear school for my exiled husband who cannot find happiness in this land of too many opportunities we leave their scrubbed-clean-of-longing house all four of us grumpy haunted by unfulfilled memories that force home under cushions with crumbs quarters and other lost treasures 1. homesickness/alienation ...