My family never stopped migrating. We fight
so hard. With each other and ourselves. Don’t
talk about that. Not now. There is never
a good time and I learn that songs are the only
moments that last forever. But my mother
always brings me the instant coffee my
dede drank before he died. She wraps it
so carefully in a plastic bag from the market
that we go to when Caddebostan feels unreachable.
We don’t talk about that. Or the grief.
Or my short hair. I want to know what
dede would have said. I want to know that he
can feel the warm wind too if he tried.
We fight so hard. We open the tops of
each other’s heads and watch the birds
fly out. We still don’t talk about my dede.

^{after Yvan Goll}

In the absent oils of your eyes two brown ores
resting leisurely on the view of your children.

You uncoil casually. My hand slipping
to the west and what was felled fills me

until I fall forward injuring your already dead arm.
I am so sorry. Our wills in a twist. Electric.

Some pulse between the gurney and the distant coffin.
My camera shutter clicking wildly around my neck.

Back home tus rab hlau searches for your hands.
The soil to harden. Rapture on the way. Onions

sprouting passionately as neglected gardens do.
The seven prisms of my blood bursting through my ears.

Your living children still living. Your garden goddess
drying the last goods in her shrine. With spring-like

precision the sun weeps until I boil. My head cracked
in four places. The ribbed earth catching fatal drops

of your blood or mine. You beseech me but in my time
I’ve slept away the sun. The underside of distance.

But I behold you now in this cool church and for a ransom.
I photograph you again and again. Your form crystalizing.

Your parted mouth a new annex to the ancestral house.
Your bones at the table. O how fair the jaundiced skies.

You get up to close that clear brittle door.

Yallah habibti, move your tongue like the sea

easy. My big sister teaches me to ululate, rolls

her tongue in waves. Dips thin fingers inside

my mouth to pull out mine, stretches it long

and pinches the tip. Watch, we move tongues

like this. I see the walls of our father’s house

collapse and we swim free leleleleleleleleleee

On the ferry to Tangier I shriek across the sea.

Practice how to sound like a real woman. Old

aunties grab my buttocks, smush their breasts

against my back and sing leleleleleleleleleleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Don’t cover your mouth habibti! Only women

on the upper deck, only sea. We move tongues

like this to tell the waves stay back, tell men

stay back, tell the dead stay gone, tell runaway

wives stay gone. They turn me into wisteria

woman, limbs wrapped around poles and thighs

as they guide me. Throw back your head, epiglottis

to the breeze. Salt air burns my hot membranes,

scratches at the tight knots of my chords.

All my life I was told

women must swallow sand 

unless we are sounding

a warning.

Sweetheart

when you break thru

you’ll find

a poet here

not quite what one would choose.

I won’t promise

you’ll never go hungry

or that you won’t be sad

on this gutted

breaking

globe

but I can show you

baby

enough to love

to break your heart

forever