After the Consulate

For Jamal Khashoggi

If they dismember me, remember to let each part
drift free like a mollusk’s smoke of ink, fuming
dark cloud into blue light, and let each arm
skim the sky, flap like a guiltless monarch,
let my torso glide like a royal tern, beautiful
till it meets my forehead crowned with black crest,
and let each finger ghost float like jellyfish tentacles
across the ocean, and when it reaches locked lips,
onto them press, oh press, press its prints.

Faucet

On its way to Isfahan
the bus makes a pit stop

before dawn, somewhere
along the five-hour trip

on a twilight road,
where a fluorescent shop

sells pistachio brittle
and plastic toys.

Yawning passengers
head for the bathrooms,

and I do too
to rinse off some spilled juice,

waiting behind the line
of women by the communal sinks.

There are no signs here
in this restroom

but a woman ends
her ablution by pooling water

one last time in cupped hands
to splash the faucet,

clearing the suds
from discoloured brass.

And the next woman
does the same

and all the women
do the same

and my mom always
does this at home,

making sure we don’t
touch soapy handles, but

we are her family—
you know, we expect

that kind of care,
habitual and immediate.

When consideration
is so effortless for a stranger,

when it is the undirected step
in ritual, I wonder if that

is what makes a defiant compassion,
so automatic and built-in

for no one related.
When they rush out

as sunrays poke
a deserted horizon,

is it time for prayer; here,
service has already started.

Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad’s poetry has appeared in Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Waxwing , among others. She is the poetry editor for Noble / Gas Qtrly, and is a Best of the Net, Pushcart Prize, and Best New Poets nominee. She lives in New York where she practices matrimonial law. She can be found on Twitter @mtorbat.

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