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Every
Remembering Is a Lamentation
I
don’t remember my mother
beating
me early in the evenings,
late
after lunch, just in time for
breakfast
sandwiches and cold chocolate.
I
don’t remember my father
and
my seven brothers going
off
to work without kissing me
and
calling me Snow White.
I
don’t remember pulling
other
girls by the braids,
or
snatching their ugly boyfriends
just
because I could.
I
don’t remember hectically
hurtling
knife after knife
at
the man who took my virginity,
or
sticking a fork into his green eyes.
I
don’t remember a word of
advice
from behind my back nor
the
calming streams of acid nor
the
difference between the twin moons.
I
remember the gray pigeons fed
in
the city park from the hands
of
a blind old man with eight fingers
and
all-weather boots.
I
remember the last breath of mint
from
a local fortune teller who never
predicted
her own death nor
the
late return of her sons.
I
remember the open sea between
Poland
and Scandinavia and the giant
who
chopped a piece of a mountain
and
made a step stone for his wife.
And
I remember lying at death
and
getting a gentle kiss from
the
fairest and the darkest African
prince
on a sunburnt horse.
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Homecoming
The
heat of a summer night brewed
camomile
growth in my backyard
when
I left my country.
Winter
Sweden whetted my nose hair
with
the smells of baked bread,
saffron
buns and cinnamon pastry.
Fifteen
years later I enter my old house,
the
fumes grip my tongue
and
make words clammy.
Everything
feels real like a good
steady
dream, a dream that does not
leave
you when you wake up.
The
neighborhood is almost preserved except for
unrecognizable
faces framed in familiar windows.
It
is nice and ghostly to be there again.
I
caress the cold stove to which I was strapped,
my
eyes bulging at the short queue of
soldiers
and civilians, not more than five of them.
I
gave up screeching after the third.
I
admire the stamina of men,
posing
for foreign photographers
from
behind a fence, and somehow
with
their thirsty clammy lips
smacking
a word in a foreign,
yet
recognizable tongue, fresh and crisp
like
your mother’s breath⎯“help”.
My
old bedroom is empty, once again.
I
wonder if they took all our furniture with them
or
burned the lot.
I
wonder how they survived winter without us and
why
they left hooks welded to the curtain holders,
with
smoked-meat rests all scorched and salt-white.
Back
in Sweden, the Persian grocers have baked
ten
kinds of fumy bread, raisin buns, Danish pastry,
baklava
and American doughnuts.
I
was not gone a month, and already
he
has renamed his store
“There’s
no place like home”.
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You
Told My Mother She Was a Bitch
You
told my mother she was a bitch
Over
a cold dinner dish.
You
dared her to cry and screech.
‘Stop
whinin’ you bleedin’ witch!
As
a beast on a leash,
You
spat my mum like a crying bitch.
Oh
you damn stinking flitch.
You
rubbed her face with salty fish,
And
made her cry and screech.
Then
put your palm on her neck, a hitch.
She
swiveled her eyes, divulged a wish.
You
told my mother she was a bitch.
I
took a bat and served you a pitch.
Now
you were a cold fish.
You
wrenched her to cry and screech.
Behind
the bars I cannot breach
The
line of silence of a granted wish.
You
told my mother she was a bitch,
You
dared her to cry and screech.
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