John sings to my mother
Malvern, U.K., 1974:
At an English language education summer camp
for Iranian-Armenian kids, counselor John sits smiling,
surrounded by braided heads; dark as
Caspian caviar, frizzy as
their fenugreek names feel
in his fish-and-chips mouth. One of them is
my mother, aged fourteen. She watches
in rapt attention as he strums the guitar, singing the song about
the old man in the closed-down market,
and the girl with her clothes in rags.
How can you tell me you’re lonely? He asks her; both of them blissfully
blind to the future; five years later, she will remember
lonely; the word that squeezes into a suitcase, that limps
down the stairs like a silent sole of a scared shoe when
the Supreme patriarch calls,
his flag-ripping cry so loud that
a crucifix cowers; forgive me, Father, for I have
prayed on Sunday instead of Friday,
showed my shins in the street,
sipped a little champagne.
Meanwhile,
John sits smiling, singing
about the streets of London, insisting
he can show [her] something
to make [her] change
[her] mind.
Belmont, Massachusetts, USA, 2009:
In our computer room, my mother sits smiling, her shoulder
a soft home for my curly head, dark
as a Hershey bar, frizzy
as my fenugreek name feels in the neighbors’
sandwich bread mouths. I am
aged fourteen, watching in rapt attention as
she sings along to the YouTube video that plays the song about
the old man in the closed-down market,
and the girl with her clothes in rags.
How can you tell me you’re lonely? She asks me, blissfully
blind to the present; right now, I remember
lonely; the word that squeezes inside a stomach, that limps
down the stairs like a silent sole of a scared shoe
when the Supreme patriarch calls,
his soul-scraping cry so loud that
the stuffed animals shake; forgive me, Father, for I have
gotten stuck scaling the bell curve,
twisted my ankle chasing a five-year plan,
one-upped the Rock of Gibraltar.
Meanwhile,
my mother will still sit smiling, singing
about the streets of London,
of Tehran,
insisting
she can show [me] something
to make [me] change
[my] mind.
