Ozone Cafe

Is where I’ll wait for you
& the local Spiderman. I’ll smoke double
apple hookah and I won’t eat
the eclair I want to eat. It’s been zero
years since the war zone. I’ve lost
a day to this chair.
Have I waited enough? If not—
I’ll hold on longer.

Will you check the menu
before you come? Tripadvisor
must have a glitch—
none of the reviews are updated
& there’s a funky orange banner
atop the restaurant name—Travel
Notice. Maybe wait a minute
or two, refresh your page.

I’ll eat that eclair as I wait,
write a poem about the strange
noises I’ve heard since
my flight landed. Matter of fact,
I’ll write about the flight itself—funereal
stares & no baby made fickle
by changes in air pressure. Anyway—
have I waited enough?

I’ll wait a smoke session’s
worth, another eclair,
a cat call or two.

I’ll wait a military resurgence,
a delay-action bomb,
a limb severed from its cartilage.

If you don’t come tonight,
have the waiter send your ID card
to the table by the date palm tree;
I’ll cross-reference your knee.

Turn my face toward the street.
Watch
the incessant crowd of bodies,
the tanks, a bit too heavy-handed,
trampling their corpses.

Around the corner, a boy bides his time—
like him,
I’ll hold on longer.

I Do Not Ask Anymore

                    after Maya Abu Al-Hayyat

if your first kiss tastes of regret or pistachio lattes,
how many kids play ball at your neighborhood,
or what your profession is.
I do not ask anymore. But perhaps I care
how you spend your day
or which brand of cigarettes strike your fancy,
how you make sense of the rattling outside, how
you puff air into a deflated basketball while pretending the
secondary shock did not cause its irreversible flattening,
how you swipe past videos of your brothers being
decimated in the middle
of rogue shelling.

Tell me how you plan to cross the Nile now
that your seasonal allergies flared, caked phlegm
muzzling your wails, how the disease has fermented inside
your bronchioles, how the very last village doctor
was burned alive by a 14-year-old pretending
to be a sensible soldier.
It matters to me
what you’re thinking now
as you shush your sister to sleep,
your atrophied limbs resting on ancient ground,
while the land remembers her curdled blood.

I do not ask anymore
about your prayers, your land,
but perhaps I care
how you escaped destiny by chance,
how you made it through lootings,
teargas,
and rapists occupying the capital.
Your first kiss, your name,
your appearances do not matter.
You made it all the way here
like a forgotten prayer.