The Clot
 

For my father
 

         Simply sleeping

He bites his lips on an anger
caused by reasons he forgot.
He sleeps deeply,
the palms holding up his head
make him look like the soldiers
dozing in midnight trucks
when they shut their eyelids
on piles of surveillance pictures
leaving their souls to spin
until they suddenly turn into angels.
 

         ECG

I should have become a doctor
so that I could track the ECG
with my own eyes,
and confirm that the clot
was a mere cloud
that would break into normal tears
when enough warmth is provided.
But I am useful to no one,
and my father who cannot sleep in his own bed
sleeps deeply on a table
in a wide hall.
 

         Screams

Silent women
fill the corridors leading to you.
They are preparing for a ritual
that will remove the rust
piled on their throats
and that can only test their range
in collective screaming.
 

         That is good

Volunteers' shoulders
carried the man from the bed next to yours
to the public graveyard.

This is good for you.
Death cannot repeat its misdeed
in the same room,
on the same evening.
 

         Portrait

His heart, attuned to every step I took,
now he can be remembered
only as an old, musty smell.
Maybe he hated my summer shorts,
and my poetry that is empty of music.
But I caught him more than once,
dizzy in the hubbub my friends made,
stealing puffs
from cigarettes they left behind.
 

         Resemblance

So that I could buy translated poems
this deep sleeper convinced me
that his wedding band irritates his finger.
He continued smiling as we left the jeweler's,
and as I told him
his nose looks nothing like mine.
 

         News of your death

I will receive your death
as the last wrong you committed against me.
I will not feel relief as you'd hoped.
And I will firmly believe
that you have denied me the opportunity
to diagnose the tumors
that lay dormant between us.
In the morning
I may be surprised by my puffed eyelids
and that the stoop in my back

has gotten sharper.
 

         House of Mirrors

We will go together
to the amusement park.
You will see yourself taller than your father's date palm
and I will stand beside you twisted and dwarfed.
No doubt, we will laugh a lot
and mercy will spread between us.
Each of us will know
that we both carry on our backs
childhoods deprived
of visiting amusement parks.
 

         Visits

My dead mother visits me
frequently in dreams.
Sometimes she cleans my nose
of schoolyard dust.
Other times she gathers my hair
with the violence of a pair of hands
accustomed to braiding a girl.
She will pay no attention
to the scissors
that dominated my hair,
or its split ends.

You too
can stall the world at the moment of your death.
And I will have enough time to warn you.
 

         Many times

Many times
the doctor enters our house and says:
You called too late.
Because of this
I will wipe out the medical records
of loved ones who are not buried when they die.
And as I firmly shut them away,
I will convince
the windows in my room
that I have a private mourning
to attend to
while the music of nearby celebrations
blares.
 

         You have lost wisdom

I knot my hair at the back
to resemble a girl you once loved.
And for years,
I have washed my mouth of beer
before returning home.
And I never bring up God in your presence.
I have done nothing to deserve your forgiveness.
You are kind, but you must have lost your senses
when you made me believe
that the world is like a girls' school
and that I have to suppress my wishes
if I want to remain the teacher's pet.
 

         In neutrality

I will wash my hands of tranquilizing lies,
and burn before his eyes
the clay I shape to fit his dreams.
He
will point to the left side of his chest,
and I
will nod with the neutrality of nurses.

He must believe
before the coma ends
that his wish to die
will not hide the ruptures within the family.
 

         Dividers

Usually, the windows are gray
and splendid in their width
allowing the bed-ridden
to view the traffic below
or the weather outside.

Usually, the doctors have sharp noses
and eyeglasses
that fix the distance between them and pain.

Usually, relatives leave
flowers at room entrances
with prayers seeking forgiveness
from their future dead.

Usually, unadorned women
walk the hallway tiles,
and sons stand under light fixtures
clutching x-ray files
affirming that cruelty can fade away
if only their parents had more time.

Usually, everything recurs
and the wards are filled with new bodies
as if a punctured lung
has sucked away all the world's oxygen
leaving all these chests
to suffer from shortness of breath.
 

         Not likely

It's not likely
that I will take my father to the sea at year's end.
So
I will hang across from his bed
a poster of beachgoers
and seashores that stretch to places I do not know.
He may not see it at all.
This is why
I will silence the sound of my breathing
as I wet his fingertips with salt water.
And I will believe years later
that I heard him say:
"I smell the scent of iodine."