Meditations in an Emergency
After Frank O’Hara
True: All I wanted was boundless love. True: My dead have been dying in their homes
and their homes die with them. How many of us had to die for you to love us?
How many people, in boats on planes in their bedrooms fast asleep—smelling
the fresh peel of an orange? How long before you lift the bombs you
dropped to make bracelets for your own two arms?
The blinking has started in my sleep.
In the English language,
no one is allowed to kill unless they are already dead.
What kind of poems would I write if my only enemies were my
spiraling thoughts?
False: Nobody knows who is killing our families.
True: In the English language you give up the territory of
Love.
Virtually, I could kill you only if I didn’t need you.
I Live My Life in Widening Circles
Who told you that I care about
your grief? The leaves are swallowed
Slowly by wet dirt. Doing
is beyond me. I watch for
The cold, divining temperature
from how loudly the light cracks against
marble floors. Who told you that I care
about your grief?
If you want to mourn, mourn. Peel away
the bark of a birch
until a frozen branch sprouts
from your chest. In recent memory,
We are as easy to break as the first
frost. Doing is beyond me—
It is possible to die on cold days, too.
Who told you that I care about your
grief? Take it to the brown snow
by the side of the asphalt, strip the
frozen shards of dirt from the ground.
I broke my shovel on unnamed
corpses—I am telling you
to dig with your hands.
[ ]
If you turn to dust, beloved,
I will follow you
under the house, pass
pebbles through my fingers
like prayer beads.
I know the caves
are like heaven, I know
what they don’t—
that hell is a cardboard
cutout laid on top of a hole
so that we can dig ourselves
to safety.
And if the rivers run
under packed dirt, it is only
so we can wash
the hair of our dead—
If you turn to dust, beloved,
if you pour from the concrete
like tears, I will shake out the
carpets and tell the cameras
that you wanted your home
clean, that you were born cursing
the homicidal sky, cursing Hafez
whose lover knows nothing and
is also God.
Narges Anzali is a contributing writer and managing editor for the Nassau Weekly.