Envoy by Catherine Barnett

Envoy

I was trying to look a little less like myself 

and more like other humans, 

 

humans who belonged, so I put on a skort.

Purchased in another life, when I had a husband 

 

and wrote thank-you notes and held dinner parties,

the skort even had its own little pocket,

 

and the fingerprint stains yellowing the fabric

were almost invisible, nothing to be ashamed of

 

as I walked past homes and faces

with their welcome signs and their no-trespassing signs.

 

I was hoping to look domesticated, 

or at least domesticable, 

 

that I too could walk the trails

and then return home, stretch out

 

beside another human and watch something

on a big screen until it was time to sleep. 

 

I too had veins at my wrist, 

and I'd read Maslow, 

 

with his hierarchy of needs. 

I remembered that love and belonging 

 

were pretty basic, and that at the top 

of the pyramid was transcendence.

 

Late that night I took off the skort 

and lay down on the kitchen floor of a house

 

where years ago a boy and his girlfriend

overdosed in the basement, a fact 

 

I try not to remember. 

There used to be a cross staked outside, 

 

beneath the blue spruce that died 

when the place was abandoned. 

 

Because I am afraid,

I left the outside light on.

 

Halogen burns hot, so bright 

it must have stunned the imperial moth

 

shimmering against the window screen.

Most moths would rather spin around lights 

 

than mate, which is all they are put here to do,

and sometimes they just tire themselves out 

 

flying at night. This one was disguised

as an autumn leaf, though it was only midsummer.

 

Size of my hand.

As much enigma as legerdemain,

 

very temporary,

at most she would live a week.

 

Something about the way she waited there, 

wings outstretched, still as a flat lichened stone,

 

made me want to rescue my copy of Maslow 

from the basement and study the hierarchy again.

 

In the diagram I saw sex at the very bottom--

along with eating, drinking, sleeping. 

 

I wondered if that meant it was foundational,

or optional. The moth, vibrating there

 

in the circle of light, seemed to be choosing

transcendence over other basic needs. 

 

Imperial moths have no mouthparts,

they don't eat, they make no sound.

 

In the morning, I buried her 

under the ghost spruce as cars sped by. 

 

Before I tossed the dirt back 

over the shallow hole, I took a photo, 

 

to prove there really was such a thing 

as an imperial moth. 

 

To prove she wasn't alone. 

Wings made of iridescent chitin 

 

arranged to look like leaf litter, 

in the dirt she glowed a little.

Words Whispered to a Child Under Siege by Joseph Fasano

Words Whispered to a Child Under Siege

No, we are not going to die.
The sounds you hear
knocking the windows and chipping the paint
from the ceiling, that is a game
the world is playing.
Our task is to crouch in the dark as long as we can
and count the beats of our own hearts.
Good. Like that. Lay your hand
on my heart and I’ll lay mine on yours.
Which one of us wins
is the one who loves the game the most
while it lasts.
Yes, it is going to last.
You can use your ear instead of your hand.
Here, on my heart.
Why is it beating faster? For you. That’s all.
I always wanted you to be born
and so did the world.
No, those aren’t a stranger’s bootsteps in the house.
Yes, I’m here. We’re safe.
Remember chess? Remember
hide-and-seek?
The song your mother sang? Let’s sing that one.
She’s still with us, yes. But you have to sing
without making a sound. She’d like that.
No, those aren’t bootsteps.
Sing. Sing louder.
Those aren’t bootsteps.
Let me show you how I cried when you were born.
Those aren’t bootsteps.
Those aren’t sirens.
Those aren’t flames.
Close your eyes. Like chess. Like hide-and-seek.
When the game is done you get another life.

Art of War by Rashed Aqrabawi

 Art of War

 

I

 

Before she died, we dressed my grandmother

every morning in finer and finer clothes.

The sicker she got, the stiffer her shirt.

 

We coiffed her hair.

It hung on her head like a mahogany helmet.

 

Figs appeared like stillborns beneath the trees.

My mother picked each one then hired a woman

with rough hands to peel them.

 

The nurse arrived, her face wreathed in paint.

Every day she came dressed for murder.

White foundation, eyebrows arched in pencil,

a headscarf like children’s crayons.

 

She complained about her many children.

Her daughter was getting beat

by her husband, she informed me,

while manicuring my dying grandmother’s nails.

 

My daughter is the fool, she hissed.

The one who stays is the fool.

 

I encounter my grandmother’s illness

with this woman’s life. This strange woman

who came every day from her house in Ashrafiyeh to ours.

 

I was reading the Greek myths. Every day,

my grandmother was Persephone.

My mother was Hades.

The nurse crossing the Styx

at noon, the water lapping

at the doors of the house

as on the edges of a boat.

 

One morning, the nurse came pregnant.

She said it was a surprise, given her husband

was in a wheelchair. She praised the healing

properties of ginger. The next week she was barren.

 

Muslims do not clothe the dead. We bury them nude

wrapped in white like righting a broken bone.

 

 

 

II

 

Before my grandmother became mute,

we used to take her to the ice cream parlor.

 

She would cry into her ice cream,

and call for Mohammad.

 

Where is he?

Where is my son?

 

She wailed.

 

Mohammad,

Mohammad.

 

People stared, smiled.

 

He died when he was eighteen,

Mohammad.

 

Mothers in our language

are often called by their firstborn sons.

 

They called her by his name long after.

 

Umm-Mohammad

Mother of Mohammad

Mother of the dead.

 

 

 

III

 

My grandmother spoke of Akka,

as if it were still there.

 

It is October. They interrogated me

for six hours at the border. What are

you here to do? The officer asked.

 

I hear the nightlife is spectacular, I answered.

I also want to see the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

 

I rode in the van that operated on the Sabbath,

when the Jewish god forbade his children

from their crime, her port city.

 

A man sat like an ending

at the beginning of the old town.

 

I asked him where I was.

Akka, he said, swatting flies away.

 

Women with yellowed teeth,

howled after their sons,

in that tone women use

when there is a chance

they are calling for the dead.  

 

I tried to find something of hers. Her walls.

Napoleon himself could not get through! she’d yell.

I was carrying an old photo of her in my pocket.

I was searching for a missing person.

 

 

 

IV

 

What happens when the old go mute?

Senile is an English word.

 

We do not have an equivalent.

For the earth after an old woman was exiled

from her mind. Her four daughters huddled around

her like they were waiting for their hair to be combed.

 

 

When she refused to eat or drink,

the nurse suggested force-feeding.

 

We had seen civilizations collapse.

What was a woman’s body

 

when she had taught us to watch cities fall?

We ordained a famine.

 

She gathered the decades she had lost

overnight, these decades of mimesis,

in which I learned to read and write

 

but what have I done with those cities? The ones you left us.

Was that your death? I love

 

I love I love

the house it has made of me.