For days, doubt struck as does lightning
across the span of night. Illuminated that way,
how did we cross the river? One stone,
then another. The silence between us a keyhole
through which I peeked & found you teasing
off your robe. Love? If it exists,
|
434 wires unlock the land |
limbs sling across the chasm |
At-sink coffee;
way horizon curry lined.
We’re spilling turbinado
as we spoon out in half light.
By REWA ZEINATI
the war drove us out—
and into my father’s used white sedan—
By K. IVER
My father teaches ethics at a university.
My mother teaches ethics at a university.
They save. Their money. Buy
a large bungalow in Connecticut.
They continue. Saving. Enough
to support the San Francisco AIDS
Foundation and their baby.
They read the news and wish kindness
into our laws. One of them will say
Sweden hasn’t been to war since 1812.
The other says you can start a business
in Sweden and get free healthcare.
They’re excited. About my arrival.
They remain. Calm. When
midnight cries wake them.
My father waits. For my mother to heal.
Before asking for sex. She’s good.
At saying no. She throws meditation
and exercise and intense therapy
at her trauma. Still goes to AA.
When wrong. She promptly admits it.
Every night she arrives home from
the university. Her soft. Low voice.
Builds a replica in my throat. She wears
minimal. Makeup. Cuts her nails down
because who needs the fuss. When I walk.
Into a room. And see my father.
I continue walking in. When my father
and I leave. The house. Lots of women
introduce themselves. When we get back
he tears. Their numbers over the trash.
On weekends my father and I dig
in the dirt. I watch him plant
lilac bulbs around the spruce. He lets
my small hand pack the ground.
Affirms it as help. When my father puts.
me to bed with true stories of him
sewing clothes for new mothers
in Ukraine. I fall asleep fast.
prepare yourself
for entry
prime yourself to be stripped
like something ripe
and swaddled in soft velvet
never mind how the skin feels
By REWA ZEINATI
Water.
At the shore we don’t build anything. Behind our sunglasses, our eyes dart in every direction. A man carries a sandcastle on his back. A fish. Or is that a tattoo of a fairytale palace? His arms are full sleeves of ink. Maybe he’s been working in the financial district for years. Maybe he’s only here for three days.
In the water we talk salaries and offices and how much saltier this sea is compared to ours. Ours? We talk about hunger, the likelihood of lunch. On my left, Burj Al Arab juts forth its belly of glass and steel.
Emerging from her cocoon without a mouth,
the luna moth climbs onto a stem to unfurl
and dry her wings. She’ll find a mate tonight.
There will be no kiss. There will be no taste.
There will be no speech or song. After midnight
the still, silent couple will join like drops of rain.
By AKSINIA MIHAYLOVA
Translated by MARISSA DAVIS
No, I have never seen a sad tree,
but I don’t want to keep reflecting the world
like a chipped mirror,
This was Arabia as a romantic imagination might have created it; nights so mellow that they lay out under the scatter of dry bright stars, and heard the silence beyond their fire as if the whole desert hung listening.
—Wallace Stegner, Discovery! The Search for Arabian Oil
“When we arrived there [Aramco], it was no Arabian Nights at all. It was just a kind of shack, it seemed to me.… Air-conditioned shacks with a great big swimming pool in the middle with a canvas over the top.”
—Mary Stegner to her husband’s biographer, Jackson J. Benson
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Celebrating 15 Years