Fuel (3 page)
Authors: Naomi Shihab Nye
1.
I break this toast for the ghost of bread in Lebanon.
The split stone, the toppled doorway.
Someone's kettle has been crushed.
Someone's sister has a gash above her right eye.
And now our tea has trouble being sweet.
A strawberry softens, turns musty,
overnight each apple grows a bruise.
I tie both shoes on Lebanon's feet.
All day the sky in Texas that has seen no rain since June
is raining Lebanese mountains, Lebanese trees.
What if the air grew damp with the names of mothers?
The clear-belled voices of first graders
pinned to the map of Lebanon like a shield?
When I visited the camp of the opposition
near the lonely Golan, looking northward toward
Syria and Lebanon, a vine was springing pinkly from a tin can
and a woman with generous hips like my mother's
said, “Follow me.”
2.
Someone was there. Someone not there now
was standing. In the wrong place
with a small moon-shaped scar on his cheek
and a boy by the hand.
Who had just drunk water, sharing the glass.
Not thinking about it deeply
though they might have, had they known.
Someone grown and someone not-grown.
Who imagined they had different amounts of time left.
This guessing-game ends with our hands in the air,
becoming air.
One who was there is not there, for no reason.
Two who were there.
It was almost too big to see.
3.
Our friend from Turkey says language is so delicate
he likens it to a darling.
We will take this word in our arms.
It will be small and breathing.
We will not wish to scare it.
Pressing lips to the edge of each syllable.
Nothing else will save us now.
The word “together” wants to live in every house.
Music lives inside my legs.
It's coming out when I talk.
I'm going to send my valentines
to people you don't even know.
Oatmeal cookies make my throat gallop.
Grown-ups keep their feet on the ground
when they swing. I hate that.
Look at those 2 o's with a smash in the middleâ
that spells good-bye.
Don't ever say “purpose” again,
let's throw the word out.
Don't talk big to me.
I'm carrying my box of faces.
If I want to change faces I will.
Yesterday faded
but tomorrow's in
BOLDFACE
.
When I grow up my old names
will live in the house
where we live now.
I'll come and visit them.
Only one of my eyes is tired.
The other eye and my body aren't.
Is it true all metal was liquid first?
Does that mean if we bought our car earlier
they could have served it
in a cup?
There's a stopper in my arm
that's not going to let me grow any bigger.
I'll be like this always, small.
And I will be deep water too.
Wait. Just wait. How deep is the river?
Would it cover the tallest man with his hands in the air?
Your head is a souvenir.
When you were in New York I could see you
in real life walking in my mind.
I'll invite a bee to live in your shoe.
What if you found your shoe
full of honey?
What if the clock said 6:92
instead of 6:30? Would you be scared?
My tongue is the car wash
for the spoon.
Can noodles swim?
My toes are dictionaries.
Do you need any words?
From now on I'll only drink white milk
on January 26.
What does minus mean?
I never want to minus you.
Just thinkâno one has ever seen
inside this peanut before!
It is hard being a person.
I do and don't love youâ
isn't that happiness?
There's no talking in this movie.
It's not a movie! Just watch the dancers.
They tell the story through their dancing.
Why is the nutcracker mean?
I think because the little boy broke him.
Did the little boy mean to?
Probably not.
Why did the nutcracker stab his sword through the mouse king?
I liked the mouse king.
So did I. I don't know. I wish that part wasn't in it.
You can see that girl's underpants.
No, not underpants. It's a costume called a “tutu”âsame word
as “grandmother” in Hawaiian.
Are those real gems on their costumes?
Do they get to keep them?
Is that really snow coming down?
No, it can't be, it would melt and their feet get wet.
I think it's white paper.
Aren't they beautiful?
They are very beautiful. But what do the dancers do
when we can't see them, when they're off the stage
and they're not dancing?
Do you have any more pistachios in your purse?
Our son's shirts attend kindergarten
for the third time.
They are still learning how to share.
*
To wear my friend's lace camisole
I had to become a new person.
Since I was plenty tired of myself,
it was a pleasure.
*
Closets bulging
with gingham castoffs,
calico and rickrack denim,
my mother begs, “Enough.”
But when I gave
her dotted swiss curtains
to the Salvation Army,
she was inconsolable.
One can't be too careful.
*
I'm in my linen period now.
That casual crumple,
that wrinkled weight,
sustains.
*
My father won't enter
a secondhand store.
He pitched his extra pants into the Atlantic
when he started his new life.
Under Ellis Island
whole wardrobes may be mingling
with seaweed,
buckling and bobbing with fish.
I wish for once to be dressed
in something sleek and thin
as original skin.
There will not be a test.
It does not have to be
a Number 2 pencil.
But there will be certain thingsâ
the quiet flush of waves,
ripe scent of fish,
smooth ripple of the wind's second nameâ
that prefer to be written about
in pencil.
It gives them more room
to move around.
Blazing pink shirts spill into streets, garden green, full-throated
fluorescent, fiesta red. Humdrum the dim subtleties! The mothers haul
parasols for sun toward Ferris wheels which may or may not have that last pin
properly placed. Who cares, these days? You could die just eating.
They drag small stools for sitting at parades and toddling boys who kick
the giant Coke cups pitched onto curbs, toeing the sweet and sticky trails.
Thirsty places inside their mouths grow and grow. Soon they too would spend
extra for what they usually pour from the big bottle in front of TV.
City Hall shrinks in a cluttered grid of Tilt-a-Whirls and Rocket Rides.
Now our local headliners may watch their constituents flip upside down
for fun. How much have they done to lose our faith? See them reach their
people here, propellers of hair spinning out. See the people thread
the crowd to smash a bottle with a ball. All they need
is a break in schedule to sizzle again. Give them kings, confetti,
cascaróne
eggs cracked over their heads. Dribble of itchy bits down the back
of the shirt, who cares, insurance, who cares, brown spots on the back of the
hand? In this land of glistening ballgowns and floats of flashing girls,
everything shifts. Even if her waving hand is gone
in two minutes. They trade in lonely houses for the crowd,
beer-scented blaring, bras without shirts,
the sloping, sweltering flesh. They mesh. They lose their quarters. They
guffaw. They ought to do what that booth says, put their name on the littlest
grain of rice like magic, but what about Fernando, Dagoberto,
Henrietta, Marielena? Aren't they too long? What about Octavio
Hernandez-Salvatierra and his 20 uncles and their 77 hopes? What about
the year we planned to trick everything gloomy like a bad yard
with sudden roses turning nice or something that swells and stays swelled,
bubbling and softening, changing its life?