That Day in Heliopolis
At the movies,
I'd nest my head in his jacket,
his voice would slow
my heartbeat.
"Don't be afraid,
it is not real."
We rode camels at the Pyramids.
At the Palmyra café, he put
Backgammon pawns in my palms.
Everyone complained,
"You're spoiling the little brat."
At school, they threw me
off the team that day.
I was useless, they said,
"What a baby," someone said.
"Leave her alone,
she's crying because
her father is dead."
I waited all-day
to come back home.
I understood
the black dress,
the pale, thin lips,
the pink Salon glittering,
shining like a monstrance...
"Is it true what they said?
Isn't he coming back?"
The lips moved...
First published by Negative Capability
From Tea in Heliopolis (Press 53 2013)
A Glimpse of Fall
My Art teacher says,
"Never paint a tree
in Spring or Summer,
paint them nude,
when you can see them
embrace each other,
when their antlered arms
raise in different directions."
It's too cold to paint
outdoors where the river
begins to melt under
ducks' emerald green.
I'm glad the next-door
neighbors didn't build.
Their tall crackled oaks
will be mine a while longer
still covered with
shriveled sandy-ochre leaves.
Leaves dry, cling
to their old birthplace.
I think of my mother
who always wanted
to be buried in Egypt
besides her husband, mother,
in their family vault.
Now, she'll be buried
in the New World.
When I'd tell her,
"I'm taller than you
now," she'd say,
"Don't you know people
shrink with age? I wasn't
always like this."
I try to pull the crisp
auburn leaves, one by one.
They look old, dead,
but alive inside.
They won't give up
until a new leaf
pushes them aside.
First published by Negative Capability
From Tea in Heliopolis (Press 53 2013)
I had Never Seen a Dead Man Before
Until my father-in-law died that summer in Tucson, Arizona
He seemed to sleep
in his suit and tie,
expressionless,
the color of death freezing
his shrunken features,
almost youthful in his eighties
as if an artist's pencil
performed a final facelift,
inverting lines
for a last farewell.
I knelt on the velvet
rest in prayer.
thinking of the fig tree
we once planted together,
of how he always
saved the juiciest fig
for me: "Here," he'd say
"This one's from your tree...
see how well I care for it?"
I felt a pang in my chest,
leaped years and years back
to a January morning: a young
child, taken away for the day,
only to return to a house
filled with absence,
where all had forgotten
how to smile.
I was never told what had
happened that day,
in Heliopolis. “Your father
is in the hospital,” they said.
I awaited your return,
week after week,
unable to understand
the silent procession,
charcoaled silhouettes
shading spaces
once forbidden to
our clumsy hands,
beveled doors
now wide-open,
black skirts hiding pink
damask silk, flowing
over gilded Louis XVI
chairs and Bergères
like a flock of Egyptian
ravens, threatening
my caged love-birds
placed at the balcony edge.
First published by Sukoon Literary Magazine
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