- Garden
“Death makes angels of us all” I’d written on the blackboard in the cadaver room
The next morning someone wrote “Are you sure?” If not angels then flowers I said then flew
To the town of holy taverns Where beggars prostrate for hours
Until one sits straight up head engorged like a lily On fast-forward in a nature show—
At the Bed-&-Breakfast the owner served us crab quiche The nearby pueblo was closed that day
A mother kept shouting Go back Go back So we rode a tour bus to the levee
“Mean ol’ levee taught me to weep and moan” The old man with crumby pockets snapped
“Son this lottery ticket’s expired! No matter here’s some money for it”
“But if it wins dear sir” the hobo said “Forget me not forget me not” [End Page 1155]
Fady Joudah, a Palestinian American physician, is author of The Earth in the Attic, which received the Yale Series for Younger Poets award in 2007. He is the translator of Mahmoud Darwish’s collection The Butterfly’s Burden (Copper Canyon Press). Joudah, a native of Austin, Texas, lives in Houston.