TWO POEMS
Bitter Sea
Proof your dream is true: seeingthe Prophet’s face. As a child in Mecca,I once imagined I saw him. We prayed for whole dayson rugs behind the concentric circlesWhite marble everywhere! Soon even the air looked hazywith light, small birds inside bowl-shaped fixtures.Miles of archways, calligraphy I read as art first,then lesson. I thought, ,so I prayed obsessively: I was staringat the Ka’ba, that infinity-black cube, for hours—I saw him. The Prophet flying around it. I couldn’tmake out his face. I told my mother, and she thought me holy—pious Maryam, virgin. Isa ibn Maryam, Jesus son ofMary, and I tried to be Mary for a while. In my mother’strue dreams, I’m wearing a green dress. I’m five years old.She and the Prophet are watching me swing on the setin the backyard, underneath the veranda. Another, my name writtenon the tree in heaven in which all names are written on leavesthe shape of scapulae, the heart, in Arabic, . I want to tell her:my name also means . I couldn’t even last a single fast.I am not pious, I am not holy. I show my legs. I barely pray.
