Two Poems

Binary Stars

There was a version of you,
a little more sun-kissed maybe.
Same unruly curls,
same dark silken fuzz
on the back of her neck.
She belonged to Beirut
or Baghdad,
or Gaza
as freely as you belong to Brooklyn.
(Did she also scavenge like a magpie,
collect sticks and rocks and leaves,
make altars out of dry, dead things?)
She ate stuffed grape leaves without complaining,
never had mac and cheese out of a box.
She saw her grandma every Sunday,
together they plucked parsley leaves
like tiny flowers
and made tabbouleh.
In your nightmares you yell
“My umbrella!” and “Don’t leave me!”
What horrors
did her dreams
unloose?
To her father she was baba,
to her mother, mama.
I call you mama and people stare.
How do we let go
in a language that
dissolves a border
between us?
Who brushed her hair the day she died,
parted it down the middle
finished her braids in little bows?
Who brushed her teeth,
smelled her breath
and kissed her eyelids?
I like to think the two of you
would have been friends
your laughter echoing in a playground
that was not allowed to exist.

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Full

Tonight the moon is
monstrous,
cold and round as an empty plate.
Under the rubble are vast cities
where the children sleep.
Does the moonlight reach them?
For each phase of the moon
there is a name.
For us down here
names do not serve.
What is the name for homesickness
when there is no home,
for blood,
when it seeps out of
bodies that no longer house it?

When I eat these days
I eat past the point of fullness
until I feel anchored
to the ground
as though I had swallowed a moon
that finally made me
real.