Mazen Sleeps with His Foot on the Floor, and: Death Rides the Elevator in Brooklyn, and: Boxer Wears America First Shorts in Bout with Mexican, Finishes Second, and: Love Song of the Galapagos Tortoise

Mazen Sleeps with His Foot on the Floor

for Mazen Naous

Mazen sleeps with his foot on the floor, trailing off the bed.He does not dream of dancing in Beirut. He does not hearhis mother's oud, hanging on the wall, belly round like a pearor fig or teardrop, strings cascading the ancient music.

Whenever the rockets and the bombs shook the house,Mazen and his brother would jump from bed and sprintto the basement. The first step could keep the boys one stepahead of the ceilings and walls collapsing in dusty cloudsbehind them. Mazen would sleep with his foot on the floor.So he slept for fifteen years in the roaring music of Beirut.

I remember the air raid drills of my boyhood. The bald Russianswould bomb us. The bearded Cubans would bomb us. We stoodin the hallways at school, two lines facing the walls, because the bombswould fall between us, in the middle of the hallway. The teachers toldus to be silent, and we were silent, except for the boy who chatteredat me, until the music teacher who loved operettas and forced usto listen smacked the boy into the wall. He was the only casualty.

The civil war in Lebanon is gone, and Mazen gone from Lebanon,another teacher walking his dog on campus, navigating betweenthe chain-link fences with their cranes and boarded buildings,signs everywhere in red warning Danger. At the airport in Boston,Mazen's skin will glow as if saying Danger, and the wands will passover his body, scrutinized by agents who would rather scan his mindfor the clouds of bombs and rockets he conspires to drop on them.

Mazen still sleeps with his foot on the floor. He knows what we onlythink we know, the civil war gone but not gone, how the first stepcan save us when the walls dissolve like baking powder, even as weblock out the rumbling, staring hypnotized by the icy pond of the screen.

Death Rides the Elevator in Brooklyn

On a winter morning in 1968, my father left to walk the picket line.He rode the elevator in his black coat, hood over his head in the hourbefore daybreak. On the third floor, the doors opened. A white manwaiting for the elevator stood there, peered at my father in his blackcoat and hood, in his brown skin, then screamed and fled. The doors closed.

My father laughed on the picket line that morning. He laughed for years.The guy thought I was Death, he would say. Death rides an elevatorin Brooklyn, mugger Death, militant Death, Puerto Rican Death.

Listening to the story, as the screaming man screamed louder with everytelling, I never thought that one day my father would be the man standingthere, waiting for the elevator doors to open. He did not stare or screamor run. He stepped into the elevator, and the doors closed behind him.

Boxer Wears America First Shorts in Bout with Mexican, Finishes Second

Headline in the Washington Post, April 18, 2018

In the blue corner, weighing 130 pounds, Lightning Rod Salka sheds his robeto unveil America First emblazoned across the waistband, a wall of bricksin the red, white, and blue of the American flag stamped on his shorts.He pivots and salutes the crowd. In the red corner, weighing 130 pounds,El Bandido Vargas wears a black cowboy hat with a bandanna across his face.

His trainer slips them off. Eyebrow still healing from the last fight, El Bandidostudies Lightning Rod and his border wall trunks at the casino in Indio,California. He cannot hear the ring announcer praise Tecate, the beer of boxing,snarling: Indio, are you ready? The crowd buzzes at the clang of the bell.

Lightning Rod waves his hands in circles like a magician at...