Young Poets

the country breaks, but only in one direction

my mother says never leave your chopsticks standing in rice,
says it looks too much like incense for the dead. 

          (i press my hands together & pray anyway— 
            not for the dead, but for the dying, 
            for the ones who never learned the difference.)

                          in a city i’ve never touched, a woman 
               bites her tongue clean off—another language 
          lost to the teeth. the headlines say disputed land, 
    say both sides have suffered, 
   i am made of countries that no longer exist. 
             lines that shift like salt in water. 

   (watch how a map crumbles when you hold it too tight.)

                  a house becomes rubble. (they call it collateral.)
         a name sinks to the ocean floor. (they call it necessary.) 
     (tell me—what do you call a history that doesn’t want you?) 

        the news says the land is disputed, 
             says both sides have suffered, 
        but the bullets are not balanced, the bodies are not even. 

a man walks into a grocery store and does not walk out.
a child grows up with a flag for a shadow.
& the news calls it unrest, unfortunate,
that it is complicated while the ground splits open beneath us.

my mother says to pray with both hands.
but who do you pray to when god has a passport?

             (tell me—where is the country in my blood? where does the exile end?)

i sharpen my name between my teeth,  
          write it in the margins,  
                & wait for the war to find me.

Notes on a Harvest

I.

I am not the child you wanted.

I am the seed and the apple too. 

the call                                  and the response. 

your baby 

                                    by any other name. 

your daughter, a thorn in your side. 

you do not love me the way you were meant to;

as bone loves muscle.

unconditional and saturated.

stewed and resin-sticky.

I am not the harvest of your waning body

but a phantom limb

still itching.

II.

do you remember the deer on the A418?

your mother was dying 

so we made the drive to the coast.

she was waiting there,

unfurling at the tide line,

her hands coming into their final position – 

open, a greeting,

waiting to receive fruit.

you were distracted and unkind;

your cheeks dilated with March roses.

we watched the doe,

a stalking flame,

bright and then

snuffed out in your headlights.

you pulled over as she flickered by the verge,

holding against the wind.

you couldn’t drive on,

couldn’t watch an animal suffer –

for something to be right

it must always be done by your hands.

you taught me this long ago.

and now

you will not break bread with me.

you say I look more like my mother each day.

am I only perfect in the throes of your memory?

where I am boyish, enshrined and ruddy,

dulcet in the sea air and sifting through shingle,

in search of hag stones and wishing rocks

to knead and palm until warm.

III.

you grew up at the port of pilgrimage.

you learnt to drive at fourteen, thirty miles from Mecca.

you spat the pits of dates into your father’s French tumblers,

then took your mother swimming in the red sea.

the sun has always looked good on you,

like Indian cotton, and wingtip brogues.

but now you have nowhere to return to,

no stove, no mantle, no charge to feed or water,

no holy step to sling your hook.

                whose halls will you haunt when I’m gone?

and I see you now

still – 

the ironed creases of your trousers dulled by blood,

unpicking knots of flora, fur and shrub from your fingers.

you leave her, still hot, behind a hawthorn,

neck flung back to a stargaze.

you return to the car,

and wipe your hands of it all

again.

The Fledging

That summer things were different.

The heat came early and you spent nights

thin

and

bird-like

sheltered by the cool crag of my body,

sheetless and whitely shocking

against the June hue of my arms.

We were sisters then:

we had never worked a callus to an even grain,

still found homesickness in the

lavender scented sachets of our sock drawers.

It was all knees and elbows

and hard edges beaten smooth by Suffolk winds.

We grappled and pushed but only when the landing was soft,

when a clover dusted lawn held us in repose.

We never let ourselves become strong enough

to hurt.

But you dragged your feet into winter,

lost your fledgling down for the thick pins

of early feather.

Life began to treat us a little better

when we loved each other less.

The faint impression of grass on the back of my thighs faded.

Now our jutting bodies no longer call for each other,

our wings twitch at the sight of an open door.

The last time we spent a night

laughing all the way to our molars,

you left three red hairs in the twists of my pillowcase.

I pressed them to a braid

and took it to the hollow of a felled tree,

freshly weeping idle sap.

I prayed in my own way:

for your parents to live until they are old,

for you to love until you are able,

and for the sparrows to take this auburn thread

as an offering for their nests,

to tie and untie as needed,

as promised.