POETRY

Romanticism

i fear the false god of the eternal elsewhere. 

white picket fences that shield patricians in ivory towers,

the greener grass in hues of peacock and emerald.

pearlescent sheens of charmed lives

crush the weight of me with gilded brilliance.

i write beneath chipped paint that spells out Sappho’s fragments.

i write beneath cracks in walls like medieval tapestries,

crude in their elegance.

i write beneath lightbulbs that needed replacing months ago,

cascading to earth with titantic momentum,

splintering into shards

along with my dignity.

though I fear the lotus fruit of escapism,

still I tear at its pliant flesh.

i dream of serengeti sojourns,

bearing witness to a leopardess with a warlike beauty.

i taste ruby lips of true loves lost,

mired in fragrance of honeysuckle in bloom,

sprinkled with notes of lilies of the valley.

my arms are speckled with the solar kiss of leisure.

here, in hands that have never held fine china,

my opulence is irrefutable.

Portrait, Dakar 1940

cadences of Atlantic breezes

lull a young man to slumber.

his wedding band is golden like his true love’s hair.

when it hits the sunlight, he craves her:

faint echoes of lavender clinging to silk handkerchiefs,

“la vie en rose” warbled in her dulcet soprano.

yet for love of his countrymen, he remains,

sinking in the ship that promised valor.

thirty years later, coveted medals tarnish 

in dimly lit basements, cluttered with the toys of his grandson.

he chuckles at GI Joe, the brittle plastic 

all too prone to melting in Astoria, Queens.

yet something in the heavy set shoulders is too familiar.

that grandson is too old to be drafted now,

too old to forget the choking smoke of 9/11,

the fictitious nukes and late night TV binges

of a war he praised.

after all, didn’t we have a right to defend

the America of his grandfather’s dreams?

but my father’s tattoo of the lives lost that day 

now reminds him of the lives lost in Kiev and Gaza,

in Isfahan and Tehran too:

a sordid symbol of power unchecked.

Mélancolie

for the grandfather I never knew

We wore his sorrow like he wore his pride:

Sharp tongued in two mother tongues

Dueling for dominance on my second generation lips.

His English wasn’t broken, merely engulfed In fragrant perfumes of a foreign youth

only we could inhale,

Evening breezes laden with jasmine mists, lavender sighs.

Spring lamb, boeuf bourguignon, wild strawberry soufflés:

Crafted by the same hands that held a single solitary clementine for Christmas

In pure, adolescent wonderment.

He came to this country at 16,

To labor over hot stoves with an infernal desire:

To create a better life.

He came to this country at 16, and I am 17, 

Struggling to get my driver’s license,

Struggling to endure this standardized test shangri-la,

Struggling to admit when I’m wrong in my native language.

The specter of his success haunts me:

I have inherited a legacy of perilous ambition 

And unrelenting mélancolie.

Nocturne/Swansong/Mother

Spindly fingers tire of Chopin. 

Melting over the ivory keys, she collapses: 

A cloud of restlessness against mahogany. 

I often wonder who my mother was

Before sapphire promise rings and paint-chipped farmhouses. 

In her words, she was an insecure teenager: 

And I, created in her image, follow in shaky footsteps. 

I emulate her:

Stacking cacophanies of necklaces, 

Shades of lapis lazuli, terracotta, malachite. 

I don peacock feathers and mother-of-pearl, 

Desperate to capture her vibrancy. 

I dye my hair a deeper shade, 

So her contrast seeps into me, 

I wear pencils at graying temples, 

Sketch visions of upstate New York in leatherbound journals, 

I dance with my daughter among the tigerlilies,

Sweet odes to freedom. 

It is no use. 

I’ll never be half the beauty she is. 

Her zeal for life and love etched in every wrinkle, 

I want to bend time and meet her as she was

At her happiest,

I would soar over the chasms of the cosmos

To meet you as you were.