The Boat Merchant’s Wife by Khaled Mattawa

The Boat Merchant’s Wife

      Sabratha

He started out making feluccas;

an Egyptian taught him how.

Then he opened a shop by the beach,

sold ice cream, parasols and chairs.

He asked for my hand when I was

in teacher college, first year.

Time passes like the Ghibli here.

I was 7 months with my third baby

when someone sought him

for a Zodiac. He traveled all the way

to Guangzhou, brought back a dozen,

has been selling them ever since.

One night I asked how strong

they were, how many they carry.

“It’s all in the booklet,” he said,

“no reason for what keeps happening

to them.” He sipped from a glass

of bokha and explained how

from this same jetty, long before

the Arabs and Vandals, even before

the Romans and their famous theater,

boats filled with people and goods

and sailed off. A day or a week later,

the sea sends back the drowned.

His long-lashed eyes closed when

he spoke, his face unchanged by the years.

His fingers moved so carefully

putting out his cigarette. He saw me

looking, nodded, then pulled me toward

his manhood to help him sleep.

Streets in Shanghai by Tomas Tranströmer

Streets in Shanghai

1

The white butterfly in the park is being read by many.

I love that cabbage-moth as if it were a fluttering corner of truth itself!

At dawn the running crowds set our quiet planet in motion.

Then the park fills with people. To each one, eight faces polished like jade, for all

       situations, to avoid making mistakes.

To each one, there's also the invisible face reflecting "something you don't talk about."

Something that appears in tired moments and is as rank as a gulp of viper schnapps              

       with its long scaly aftertaste.

The carp in the pond move continuously, swimming while they sleep, setting an

   example for the faithful: always in motion.          

2

It's midday. Laundry flutters in the gray sea-wind high over the cyclists

who arrive in dense schools. Notice the labrinths on each side!

I'm surrounded by written characters that I can't interpret, I'm illiterate through and

            through.

But I've paid what I owe and have receipts for everything.

I've accumulated so many illegible receipts.

I'm an old tree with withered leaves that hang on and can't fall to the ground.

And a gust from the sea gets all these receipts rustling.

3

At dawn the trampling hordes set our quiet planet in motion.

We're all aboard the street, and it's as crammed as the deck of a ferry.

Where are we headed? Are there enough teacups? We should consider ourselves lucky

       to have made it aboard this street!

It's a thousand years before the birth of claustrophobia.

Hovering behind each of us who walks here is a cross that wants to catch up with us,

        pass us, unite with us.

Something that wants to sneak up on us from behind, put its hands over our eyes and

        whisper "Guess who!"

We look almost happy out in the sun, while we bleed to death from wounds we don't

        know about.

[The famous poets came for us they came on us or some of us] by Diane Seuss

[The famous poets came for us they came on us or some of us]

 

The famous poets came for us they came on us or some of us

at least on some of us they did not come their poems were beautiful

or not but either way we learned to call them beautiful they came

like honeybees to hyacinths to some of us they came in some of us

the ones they called unreadable but fuckable or readable and fuckable

others were unfuckable the flip the fat the fierce the frayed the flawed

the frail the flunky the funny-looking radical unshaved the frumps

the flabs the poets came for us their genius sprayed on us they preyed

on us they said they’d pray for us like honeybees they dumped their load

of gold on us like god they shot their wad on us they called us sweeter

than their wives with softer skin they called their wives by telephone

their hands over our mouths to muffle us they shuffled us like decks

of playing cards and settled into hotel beds their socks and underwear

and undershirts cast upon the shore and then we’d stumble out the door

The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart by Jack Gilbert

The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,

and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,

God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words

Get it wrong. We say bread and it means according

to which nation. French has no word for home,

and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people

in northern India is dying out because their ancient

tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost

vocabularies that might express some of what

we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would

finally explain why the couples on their tombs

are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands

of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,

they seemed to be business records. But what if they

are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve

Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.

O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,

as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind’s labor.

Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts

of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred

pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what

my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this

desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script

is not a language but a map. What we feel most has

no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses and birds.

Poof by Amy Gerstler

Poof

 

Here on my lap, in a small plastic bag,

my share of your ashes. Let me not squander 

them. Your family blindsided me with this gift. 

We want to honor your bond they said at the end 

of your service, which took place, as you’d 

arranged, in a restaurant at the harbor,

an old two-story boathouse made of dark 

wood. Some of us sat on the balcony, on black 

leather bar stools, staring at rows of docked boats. 

Both your husbands showed up and got along. 

And of course your impossibly handsome son. 

After lunch, a slideshow and testimonials, 

your family left to toss their share of you 

onto the ocean, along with some flowers.  

 

You were the girlfriend I practiced kissing 

with in sixth grade during zero-sleep 

sleepovers. You were the pretty one. 

In middle school I lived on diet Coke and 

your sexual reconnaissance reports. In this 

telling of our story your father never hits 

you or calls you a whore. Always gentle 

with me, he taught me to ride a bike after 

everyone said I was too klutzy to learn. 

In this version we’re not afraid of our bodies. 

In this fiction, birth control is easy to obtain, 

and never fails. You still dive under a stall 

divider in a restroom at the beach to free me 

after I get too drunk to unlock the door. You still 

reveal the esoteric mysteries of tampons. You 

still learn Farsi and French from boyfriends 

as your life ignites. In high school I still guide you 

safely out of the stadium when you start yelling 

that the football looks amazing as it shatters

into a million shimmering pieces, as you 

loudly admit that you just dropped acid.  

 

We lived to be sixty. Then poof, you vanished. 

I can’t snort you, or dump you out over my head, 

coating myself in your dust like some hapless cartoon 

character who’s just blown herself up, yet remains 

unscathed, as is the way in cartoons. In this version, 

I remain in place for a while. Did you have a good 

journey? I’m still lagging behind, barking up all 

the wrong trees, whipping out my scimitar far 

in advance of what the occasion demands. As I 

drive home from your memorial, you fizz in 

my head like a distant radio station. What 

can I do to bridge this chasm between us? 

In this fiction, I roll down the window, drive 

uncharacteristically fast. I tear your baggie 

open with my teeth and release you at 85 

miles an hour, music cranked up full blast.