We were never ones to avoid pain 
even if we found him in another person.

And when we do (find him again)—
let him have not been born in the rain 

and grown up to become a storm. 
His kisses lightning that scorches the earth. 

As young girls, our grandmothers warned us 
When there is lightning, cover all the mirrors. 

But, one night thunder snapped; 
its rumble shattering the vanity.

We’ve chased cloudbursts ever since. 
Committed ourselves to flood and flight.

For girls like us who pray to the Sky Beings—  
Protect us whenever we go 
                                          where we were never meant to be. 
Put tobacco down 
for the ones

with Creator-shaped holes in our hearts. 
We spend lifetimes trying to fill,

to feel. What is the medicine for this?

Our mothers tell us (as they taught) 
Send them love. Send them love. Send [say it] love—

So, praise our fathers who left in the night,
mapping us into unlovable.

They made us tough as nails. Now we know 
how to hold ourselves together.

Praise the ones who listened 
when girls like us asked them to leave.

Praise the lovers who never returned.
You helped us no longer be afraid of ghosts.

For girls like us, 
the wound never fully heals.

The gentle rhythm of its pulse, a reminder to
praise our mothers for teaching us words are seeds.

We plant, bloom ourselves anew.
Praise the lightning. Praise the storms

we run through
because girls like us know—

this is where 
our medicine comes from.

After the winter rain, 
   Sing, robin! Sing, swallow!
Grasses are in the lane, 
   Buds and flowers will follow.

Woods shall ring, blithe and gay,
   With bird-trill and twitter,
Though the skies weep to-day, 
   And the winds are bitter. 

Though deep call unto deep
   As calls the thunder, 
And white the billows leap
   The tempest under;

Softly the waves shall come
   Up the long, bright beaches, 
With dainty, flowers of foam
   And tenderest speeches …

After the wintry pain, 
   And the long, long sorrow, 
Sing, heart!—for thee again
   Joy comes with the morrow.

^{translated from the Farsi by Haleh Liza Gafori}

Let’s love each other,
let’s cherish each other, my friend,
before we lose each other.

You’ll long for me when I’m gone.
You’ll make a truce with me.
So why put me on trial while I’m alive?

Why adore the dead but battle the living?

You’ll kiss the headstone of my grave.
Look, I’m lying here still as a corpse,
dead as a stone. Kiss my face instead!

That you will leave, like all
things leave, that you have left, 
that you left. The lilacs brace
themselves for this sort of blue.

The howl and bloat, a mechanical
melancholy. My hobby. My horse.
That you left. An infection
of baby’s breath in your wake.

This is no ordinary square swatch.
No baby blanket. That August,
the garbage festered in Brooklyn,
as it festers every August in Brooklyn,

but no other August in Brooklyn
did you leave. The silver slide. A sad
liberation at your departure. An airy
groan. Snide whale was I. Humpback

on a playground bench. That you
left. I shushed and dug. I rattled.
An oyster in my throat. That you left.
Ribbons of sunlight varicosing

the trash bins. I said, I prefer not to say
I’ve lost a son. In spite. Despite. I said,
a very late miscarriage. I’d miscarried,
an unsafe carrier was I, a womb with

no arms, disco ball with no discs
to refract nor reflect. Was crushed.
How easy to dismiss my grief. My girl 
on the swing. Already there. Already here.

But you. Rain on the hot sidewalk.
Turned mist. Handsome aura. Gone. 

Sip the sea. Its salt stays on the tongue.
It burns                              like wine
               the open wound.
It heals.
                Do you have the heart to say
the truth? That it is full of strange bacteria,

indifferent to your pain. I move toward spilling out

but I will not. I will let you think the sea
is sacred still.
                       Perhaps, then,
you will try to save it.

Perhaps you’ll stand with me at the shore,
the sky now darkening, watching
the waves eat back the blueblack dunes,
shadowhills of sand, watching each wavecrash
reverberate, a drum that sounded
centuries ago, each crash a spoon scoop
more of sand, a cat’s rough tongue scraping
land back to waves, thinking, how long
until the world is sea again?
With every stone it swallows,
the ocean grows. When it laps at our
peninsulas, we take it for affection,
quiet in its claws, saying to ourselves,
this is just another sort of love, to wait
to see what happens, to stand there watching
as our feet sink in the sand, arms around each others’
waists, hoodies flapping black in the wind, our mouths
unmoving, patient, tired, only just now widening our eyes.

In the carousel of life,
they ride winged steeds to distant lands,
countries bob up and down,

Home is a phoneme that will stubbornly assert itself
in a new language,
                 slip in like a crumbling
glacier into the roiling sea of
vowels, conjugations, tenses, articles …
I will chant a hundred times ‘a’ as in apple, ant,
                     mat          a a a …
                 their ears will hear the Wakhan ridge
call to them … hear the fading drum of the Hindu Kush,
                         they show up unerringly
glittering as stars in Orion’s belt,
        day after day
the light in their eyes
steers my course;
they haven’t learnt to dream yet,
desires dormant as mice waiting in the walls,
but I relearn the forgotten alphabet of
              beginnings
from their courage …
            if this table is a boat,
English is the oar guiding their course in
this land of ‘milk and honey.’

The tousled-hair boy has the purity of an angel (and wants
to be Shah Rukh Khan someday), the oldest in
her hijab exudes a quiet determination,
the middle one is in a hurry to conquer
the world, answers tumble
from her mouth unchecked 
                      like the willful Amu Darya,

                            they teach me to break
                                                                  bread.

1. Another Family

My grandfather liked to hang around Moishe Cheshinsky’s bookstore on Lawrence Avenue. We were usually the only ones in the stacks. The back room was dusty. Most of the books were written in languages I couldn’t understand. I wondered, “Why do you like it here so much?” My grandfather gestured toward the shelves, “This is my other family.”

2. The Masses

My grandfather believed we were People of the Book. His friend Meyer believed in the Book of the People. Meyer was a mensch who wanted to improve the world, Grandpa explained, but he was going about it all wrong. That’s because he was still a Communist. He had missed the news bulletin about Stalin. Meyer said, “The masses are no asses.” My grandfather shook his head. “Are you certain about that?”

3. Genesis 1 and 2

The old men seemed ancient to me—they were in their early sixties—and should have had beards. They didn’t like the organized part of religion, but they loved the Hebrew Bible. My grandpa’s cronies debated everything. They had no interest in sports—this was their favorite pastime. One day they argued about the origin of the world. Everyone had a theory about why Yahweh created mankind twice. There was a newcomer in the corner. “So what?” he said finally. “The second time was no better than the first.”

4. Ashkenazim

The old men spoke with accents. They had fled pogroms, or ten years of military service, or bad marriages. They checked Other on government forms because they did not consider themselves White. That was for gentiles. “Use your keppie,” my grandfather said, which meant my noggin. “We’re not white. We’re Jewish.”

5. Oy

My grandfather resorted to Yiddish when he was frustrated. He said oy Gutt (oh my God) or oy gevalt (good grief). But I got confused and mixed up God and grief.