Fuel Read online

  the deep green with fluted handle,

  pitcher the size of two thumbs,

  tiny lip and graceful waist.

  Here we place the smallest flower

  which could have lived invisibly

  in loose soil beside the road,

  sprig of succulent rosemary,

  bowing mint.

  They grow deeper in the center of the table.

  Here we entrust the small life,

  thread, fragment, breath.

  And it bends. It waits all day.

  As the bread cools and the children

  open their gray copybooks

  to shape the letter that looks like

  a chimney rising out of a house.

  And what do the headlines say?

  Nothing of the smaller petal

  perfectly arranged inside the larger petal

  or the way tinted glass filters light.

  Men and boys, praying when they died,

  fall out of their skins.

  The whole alphabet of living,

  heads and tails of words,

  sentences, the way they said,

  “Ya’Allah!” when astonished,

  or “ya’ani” for “I mean”—

  a crushed glass under the feet

  still shines.

  But the child of Hebron sleeps

  with the thud of her brothers falling

  and the long sorrow of the color red.

  DARLING

  1.

  I break this toast for the ghost of bread in Lebanon.

  The split stone, the toppled doorway.

  Someone’s kettle has been crushed.

  Someone’s sister has a gash above her right eye.

  And now our tea has trouble being sweet.

  A strawberry softens, turns musty,

  overnight each apple grows a bruise.

  I tie both shoes on Lebanon’s feet.

  All day the sky in Texas that has seen no rain since June

  is raining Lebanese mountains, Lebanese trees.

  What if the air grew damp with the names of mothers?

  The clear-belled voices of first graders

  pinned to the map of Lebanon like a shield?

  When I visited the camp of the opposition

  near the lonely Golan, looking northward toward

  Syria and Lebanon, a vine was springing pinkly from a tin can

  and a woman with generous hips like my mother’s

  said, “Follow me.”

  2.

  Someone was there. Someone not there now

  was standing. In the wrong place

  with a small moon-shaped scar on his cheek

  and a boy by the hand.

  Who had just drunk water, sharing the glass.

  Not thinking about it deeply

  though they might have, had they known.

  Someone grown and someone not-grown.

  Who imagined they had different amounts of time left.

  This guessing-game ends with our hands in the air,

  becoming air.

  One who was there is not there, for no reason.

  Two who were there.

  It was almost too big to see.

  3.

  Our friend from Turkey says language is so delicate

  he likens it to a darling.

  We will take this word in our arms.

  It will be small and breathing.

  We will not wish to scare it.

  Pressing lips to the edge of each syllable.

  Nothing else will save us now.

  The word “together” wants to live in every house.

  ONE BOY TOLD ME

  Music lives inside my legs.

  It’s coming out when I talk.

  I’m going to send my valentines

  to people you don’t even know.

  Oatmeal cookies make my throat gallop.

  Grown-ups keep their feet on the ground

  when they swing. I hate that.

  Look at those 2 o’s with a smash in the middle—

  that spells good-bye.

  Don’t ever say “purpose” again,

  let’s throw the word out.

  Don’t talk big to me.

  I’m carrying my box of faces.

  If I want to change faces I will.

  Yesterday faded

  but tomorrow’s in BOLDFACE.

  When I grow up my old names

  will live in the house

  where we live now.

  I’ll come and visit them.

  Only one of my eyes is tired.

  The other eye and my body aren’t.

  Is it true all metal was liquid first?

  Does that mean if we bought our car earlier

  they could have served it

  in a cup?

  There’s a stopper in my arm

  that’s not going to let me grow any bigger.

  I’ll be like this always, small.

  And I will be deep water too.

  Wait. Just wait. How deep is the river?

  Would it cover the tallest man with his hands in the air?

  Your head is a souvenir.

  When you were in New York I could see you

  in real life walking in my mind.

  I’ll invite a bee to live in your shoe.

  What if you found your shoe

  full of honey?

  What if the clock said 6:92

  instead of 6:30? Would you be scared?

  My tongue is the car wash

  for the spoon.

  Can noodles swim?

  My toes are dictionaries.

  Do you need any words?

  From now on I’ll only drink white milk

  on January 26.

  What does minus mean?

  I never want to minus you.

  Just think—no one has ever seen

  inside this peanut before!

  It is hard being a person.

  I do and don’t love you—

  isn’t that happiness?

  BOY AND MOM AT THE NUTCRACKER BALLET

  There’s no talking in this movie.

  It’s not a movie! Just watch the dancers.

  They tell the story through their dancing.

  Why is the nutcracker mean?

  I think because the little boy broke him.

  Did the little boy mean to?

  Probably not.

  Why did the nutcracker stab his sword through the mouse king?

  I liked the mouse king.

  So did I. I don’t know. I wish that part wasn’t in it.

  You can see that girl’s underpants.

  No, not underpants. It’s a costume called a “tutu”—same word

  as “grandmother” in Hawaiian.

  Are those real gems on their costumes?

  Do they get to keep them?

  Is that really snow coming down?

  No, it can’t be, it would melt and their feet get wet.

  I think it’s white paper.

  Aren’t they beautiful?

  They are very beautiful. But what do the dancers do

  when we can’t see them, when they’re off the stage

  and they’re not dancing?

  Do you have any more pistachios in your purse?

  PASSING IT ON

  Our son’s shirts attend kindergarten

  for the third time.

  They are still learning how to share.

  *

  To wear my friend’s lace camisole

  I had to become a new person.

  Since I was plenty tired of myself,

  it was a pleasure.

  *

  Closets bulging

  with gingham castoffs,

  calico and rickrack denim,

  my mother begs, “Enough.”

  But when I gave

  her dotted swiss curtains

  to the Salvation Army,

  she was inconsolable.

  One can’t be too careful
.

  *

  I’m in my linen period now.

  That casual crumple,

  that wrinkled weight,

  sustains.

  *

  My father won’t enter

  a secondhand store.

  He pitched his extra pants into the Atlantic

  when he started his new life.

  Under Ellis Island

  whole wardrobes may be mingling

  with seaweed,

  buckling and bobbing with fish.

  I wish for once to be dressed

  in something sleek and thin

  as original skin.

  ALWAYS BRING A PENCIL

  There will not be a test.

  It does not have to be

  a Number 2 pencil.

  But there will be certain things—

  the quiet flush of waves,

  ripe scent of fish,

  smooth ripple of the wind’s second name—

  that prefer to be written about

  in pencil.

  It gives them more room

  to move around.

  YOUR NAME ENGRAVED ON A GRAIN OF RICE

  Blazing pink shirts spill into streets, garden green, full-throated

  fluorescent, fiesta red. Humdrum the dim subtleties! The mothers haul

  parasols for sun toward Ferris wheels which may or may not have that last pin

  properly placed. Who cares, these days? You could die just eating.

  They drag small stools for sitting at parades and toddling boys who kick

  the giant Coke cups pitched onto curbs, toeing the sweet and sticky trails.

  Thirsty places inside their mouths grow and grow. Soon they too would spend

  extra for what they usually pour from the big bottle in front of TV.

  City Hall shrinks in a cluttered grid of Tilt-a-Whirls and Rocket Rides.

  Now our local headliners may watch their constituents flip upside down

  for fun. How much have they done to lose our faith? See them reach their

  people here, propellers of hair spinning out. See the people thread

  the crowd to smash a bottle with a ball. All they need

  is a break in schedule to sizzle again. Give them kings, confetti,

  cascaróne eggs cracked over their heads. Dribble of itchy bits down the back

  of the shirt, who cares, insurance, who cares, brown spots on the back of the

  hand? In this land of glistening ballgowns and floats of flashing girls,

  everything shifts. Even if her waving hand is gone

  in two minutes. They trade in lonely houses for the crowd,

  beer-scented blaring, bras without shirts,

  the sloping, sweltering flesh. They mesh. They lose their quarters. They

  guffaw. They ought to do what that booth says, put their name on the littlest

  grain of rice like magic, but what about Fernando, Dagoberto,

  Henrietta, Marielena? Aren’t they too long? What about Octavio

  Hernandez-Salvatierra and his 20 uncles and their 77 hopes? What about

  the year we planned to trick everything gloomy like a bad yard

  with sudden roses turning nice or something that swells and stays swelled,

  bubbling and softening, changing its life?

  SAN ANTONIO MI SANGRE: FROM THE HARD SEASON

  We have faith that God . . . is the owner of water and the

  one who could really help us with this.

  —Rev. Rodolfo Ruiz, during prayers for the drought

  The 2 A.M. whistle of the long train

  stretches out the thread between days,

  pins it in a crack between its teeth and pulls

  so the people in white beds by the flour mill

  become the wheat

  unground in the sacks

  and the old fish with one whisker

  flips over in the river grown too thin.

  We need the rain, the iron bar of the track,

  the backside of heat. Perfect V-ripple eleven ducklings

  cast swimming toward the shore for bread.

  As the boys who will not lift their heads

  to look anyone in the eye mark the name of their pack

  on the bridge with the stink of squared-off letters,

  Señora Esquivel who lives alone

  remembers her underwear draped on the line.

  It will not rain tonight, has not rained in 90 nights.

  Cantaloupe cracks on the inside,

  jagged fissures in orange flesh.

  When the cat blinks to see the sneaky possum

  licking his water dish dry,

  he thinks, and thinks, Tomorrow I’ll get him.

  Then sleeps. Inside the small breeze

  lifting the fringe of the train’s held tone

  Hondo, Sabinal, Uvalde, Del Rio, and far off,

  glittering as Oz, El Paso rising

  from its corner, holding the giant state in place

  as a dozing conductor grips his swatch of tickets firmly

  in a car streaking the thirsty land.

  WIND AND THE SLEEPING BREATH OF MEN

  From far away

  from the faraway inside each life

  the island a minor disruption

  all night shearing off corners

  scattering the palm’s dried wings

  as wind claims the whole sky

  telling the wild story

  you who arranged your desks

  papers in the right-

  and left-hand corners

  bow down

  *

  All day the men took air into their bodies

  and traded it back again

  the men and women took air into their bodies

  growing great parachutes over their heads

  and the children gulping whole lungfuls

  saying they weren’t hungry

  breathed the same air

  as an old neighbor dutifully sweeping his leaves

  into a packet

  tied with rope

  at the top of the mountain

  we were breathing air that used to drift

  around the bottom of the mountain

  resting in a forest

  breathing the hush and rustle of bamboo

  I wanted to trade something larger

  than what I had taken

  *

  Nothing worse for the person

  who can’t sleep

  than to lie beside

  heavy sleepers

  first you envy

  then worry about them

  each hair in their nostrils

  growing more delicate

  each inhalation a small balcony

  from which you wave good-bye

  to your lives passing

  in the thousand streets

  beyond reach

  WHAT’S HERE

  Idaho potatoes have made it to Honolulu.

  Scores of automobiles, legions of shirts,

  rice steamers, bicycles,

  as well as unlikely accessories—

  bowling pin salt- and pepper-shakers,

  glittering eye shadow,

  chocolate-covered cherries,

  washed up on these shores.

  Outlandish as it seems, all these

  preceded us.

  The leaves of Eucalyptus robusta

  try not to notice it.

  Wild purple orchid,

  sleek bark of koa,

  stand clear. What’s here

  may or may not belong here.

  I press my extra eyes

  into the mist over the valley,

  forgetting my small book of stamps

  and the ten thousand travelers

  eating breakfast,

  guarding the word invisible,

  sweet breath of every tree.

  I ride the waves of vowels, saying

  in my own flat language,

  I’ll go soon. And, don’t remember me.


  WAIKIKI

  On the famous beach in Honolulu a small Japanese girl cried and cried and cried. She stood stiff-legged, poking her feet into the sand. Her parents kneeled, whispered, cajoled. Then they tried walking away. They had a baby in their arms. They strolled surprisingly far down the beach, but never took their eyes off her. She raised the volume on her crying, staring straight out to sea. Her pink bathing suit, its ruffled rump. Our eyes followed the silver planes rising off the runway. I loved every plane I was not on. I loved the wailing girl who saw no one else on that beach but herself, whose throat worked hard to find the biggest, saddest sound. After her parents gave up and dragged her still screaming down the beach, we went and sat by the poked-in place her feet had made and funneled up the billion particles into a mound.