^{translated from the Spanish by Andrés Fernández}

^{(to my sister)}

(the deafening
sound
of the sea
comes 
between
us both)

I say to her:
I think
we’re
drowned

she replies:
no
We’re not
drowned

I say to her:
we’re lying
side by side
at the bottom
of the sea

she replies:
no
We are standing
on the shore

I say to her:
I truly
believe
we’ve
already drowned

she replies:
no
We are
breathing
just fine

I say to her:
for me
no 
air
comes
in

she replies:
I have air
for both of us

desacuerdo

 ^{(a mi hermana)} 

(el rugido 
ensordecedor
del mar 
se interpone
entre 
las dos)
  
yo le digo:
creo 
que estamos 
ahogadas
  
ella responde:
no 
No estamos 
ahogadas

yo le digo:
yacemos 
a la par 
en el fondo 
del mar

ella responde:
no 
Estamos de pie 
en la orilla
  
yo le digo:
de verdad 
creo 
que ya 
nos ahogamos
  
ella responde:
no 
Estamos 
respirando 
muy bien

yo le digo:
a mí 
no 
me 
entra 
aire
  
ella responde:
Yo tengo aire
para las dos

War in the living room.
Every Friday, my mother painted it.

Every Friday for a year—
another piece of the looming billboard of her canvas
became body, boot, fire, 

bare feet of a running girl, 
flexed arm of a running soldier,
sheen on his rifle’s black barrel,
soft folds in her cotton dress,
a tree in flames and sunlit dust,
arches, domes, olive fatigues,
bombed bridge broken sky Middle East.

We were in New Jersey,
and the barefoot girl was on our coffee table, 
running across a page in a magazine,

through my mother’s body, out her mind—
onto the canvas,
her skin, our skin.

Our ancestors, born in the mountains of Khorasan, 
strolled through orchards in Baghdad,
recited in Damascus,
tended the fires in Yazd,
touched the Black Stone, said

                        The meadow is my prayer rug. 
                        Cypress trees, my minarets, 
                        and the wind, my call to prayer.

One Friday, 
my mother needed a model.
To render the surreal real or real surreal,
my mother needed to study the protruding clavicle
of a running girl.

I froze for her
mid-run.

In her palette of grief and rage,
love was the obscured and persistent undertone. 
Friday after Friday,

the girl took shape and the soldier, 
chasing her, me—

my clavicle, her clavicle,
my flesh, her flesh.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; 
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 
And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 
Yet many a man is making friends with death 
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 
It well may be that in a difficult hour, 
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, 
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, 
I might be driven to sell your love for peace, 
Or trade the memory of this night for food. 
It well may be. I do not think I would.