ONE FOR ALL
Sometimes there is no way out, only in.
I'm thinking of the Lotto clerk who jumbled the cliche,
You can't play, if you don't win.
And a birthplace is a turn of the wheel. Your kin
determined by a countries boundaries, by blood, DNA.
Sometimes there is no way out, only in.
I'm haunted by the scene of a young Syrian,
starving kid interviewed in a news video verite,
That boy can play even if he doesn't win.
He and his friends, some dead now, imagined
themselves Musketeers. All for one! They'd say
trapped in the city, no way out and they all in.
Undaunted, he went within, If they are going to kill
us with gas, make it smell like bread, that way
we can die happy. He parried with words they can't win.
The unbroken line of migrants has been
a hunger game of borders closed to weary emigres
who found a way out but not one in. In war's
convoluted lottery, you can't play if you don't win.
ODE TO MY BELLY
Bell-shaped, you sound
growling with hunger
round me from sternum
down to the space between hip bones.
Hitting bottom, you rest in the bowl
formed there
hammocked by pubic bones
pliable as a sow's ear purse
silken, you expand to hold a meal.
Pour out enzymatic juices,
break down bits of lamb and potato,
passing along the more fibrous celery
and psyllium husks, emptied, you fold in
on yourself, spasm with hunger again.
Mounded like yeasty bread dough,
you ripen, stretched thin through the years
by kneading of a husband's hands, torso,
and babies that bulged like curled ferns.
You spill out abundant over jeans, perhaps
over a dancing belt. Shall I wear a naval jewel
while you undulate, rhythmic,
coded with fat and muscle in striated layers
like so many colored scarves? Then roll you
swaying in sensuous movement
bordered by one illiac crest then the other,
snapped in seismic shifts
pulchritudinous while I perambulate
with accented foot tap and spinal slip
to loll and laze in fleshy splendor.
Yellah, Habibi, Yellah!
I celebrate your appetites my piquant friend,
always present, yet always changing
my belly, my own.
ELEMENTAL
The swan sways in flight
banks over the nest,
lands a bright boat on brackish cove.
We live on the surface of things.
Wonder at the skin covering Earth,
our island home, freckled with age spots
like our mother's hands, our own.
Tall grasses lie mostly underground
rooted in soil like miniature trees.
You recognize their blonde heads bent
in wind though you've never stood
on the disappearing prairie.
O Pioneers! You have journeyed over
rolling plains, the tender scalp of the world
if you've read Willa Cather you've seen
savannas canopied by oak. Heard the boughs
of trees sound like bows drawn over strings.
And let's not neglect Earth's private parts--
wet deltas, necessary marshes, sea buffers
where the swan swims. Must we climb
to migratory height to see our mother's face?
Claim her as kin? Let's rocket, fly
if we need distance to see our way clear.
See rivers start as weedy bogs, fill with melted snow,
spill coursing on forked as lightning, falling over
granite shelves--the river's flowing hair.
We strain leaving water, leaving land.
Awkward in flight, may we awaken in air
like the swan who lifts with labored strokes,
water-walks, achieves sky.