AIAW Featured Writer and Poet: Sholeh WolpÉ

Sholeh Wolpé - Award-winning poet, writer and literary translator




Sholeh Wolpé - Five Poems
from 'Rooftops of Tehran'

The Deep Dive

Stevie's raisin-colored braids,
a shade lighter than his skin,
bob up–down as the waves punch the boat.

He signals Go down.
I don't.

I stay close to the boat,
hold tight the taut rope.
                                    Can't breathe.
Not the air in the tank.
Not the air in the air.
My lungs inflate, deflate,
but that's beside the point.
                                    I can't fuckin' breathe,
and I yell this to the waves,
to the boat,
to Stevie
who magically surfaces beside me,
an aurous brown god in goggles,
regulator hose dangling by his mouth.
He holds my head between his palms, says,
                                    "But you ARE breathing. You ARE."

I look at him and even in this panic, this feeling
of imminent death, I note how beautiful he is,
how I could perhaps outlive this storm
in this man's brawny arms, let myself go
and the hell with the world,
with who I am, or am supposed to be,
with my anxious lover waiting at the shore.

"Relax, baby," says Stevie, "I'll stay with you."
He pulls me into his arms and I breathe deep
from the tank strapped to my back. Stealthily
he releases air from my jacket, adds
a cube of weight to my belt,
and down we go, down
into the broth of another world.

The sea bottom is a sandy desert flush against massive rocks,
and there are cacti, tiny Joshua trees, and brown grass dancing
to the water current's silent tango…
Time means nothing here.
Palestine, Israel, and Tehran mean nothing here,
my daughter contemplating suicide at twelve means nothing here,
sons in military fatigue breathing Iraqi air means nothing here,
even women giving life and grenades taking them away,
mean nothing here.

Here, the fish are birds,
electric blue fins, wings,
and beneath this airless sky, Stevie and I.

From: Rooftops of Tehran (Red Hen Press, 2008)

At Reno Airport

A wide-shouldered guard greets me and I quickly
greet her back, move on because I'm from the Middle East
and you just never know.

But the white-blue uniform follows,
watches me order a sandwich,
sit in a corner with my book.

Hell, I think, damn my thick eyebrows.
She's on to me. I carry tweezers
and those pluckers are sharp, can be held
against the delicate white throat of a flight attendant
for an extra bag of peanuts or a can of diet coke.

The guard approaches and I almost choke on my BLT,
trying to remember in which pocket of my bag
I have tossed the deadly weapon.

I was at your reading last night, she says so loud
the passengers around, nervous until now, turn
their heads to look at my face. You write sad things,
but also funny. Loved the poem about your brother
at the Canadian border. I bought two books, gave one to my friend.
Her smile is a row of perfect melon seeds.

She thanks me for coming to Reno, snow
and slot machines, then brings her wide face close,
whispers: I have to go now. I'm supposed to take things away
from people. It's my job. She giggles and suddenly she is not
as she was before. Just a girl.

The man at the next table walks to the counter,
picks up paper napkins, and I watch him because I need
some too. On his way back he lays a few on my table, nods,
goes back to his hamburger, coke and fries.

From: Rooftops of Tehran (Red Hen Press, 2008)

The Wall

She takes a nail, places it on the spot she has marked,
bites her upper lip, lifts the hammer, misses with a loud crash.

This is my cousin, the one with the Lucille Ball face,
black hair, unbroken eyes. She wants to hang her dead
husband's picture on the wall.

The large hole in the paper-thin wall scares her stiff
as does the thought of her priggish landlord with his pinkish eyes,
the grey hair jutting out his pockmarked nose.

It's been only a month since she arrived in London,
a lone woman, two children in tow, little money,
open wide for what may come— work, luck, anything.

And now she is terrified because this will not do, this large hole
in the wall for which the landlord could kick her out
with no pity in his gurgling kidney pie-fed gut.

She hurries to Harry's hardware where just last week
she bought two plastic chairs, grabs old Harry's sleeve,
and in fearless broken English cries, I have a big hole. Too big.
I want make it smaller. You help?

Harry laughs and calls over Joe, who calls over Mike,
and they consult, their bald heads together, three chuckling
chums. They send her to the shop two doors down,

and my cousin, the sight of the big hole in the wall still patched to
her mind's eye, stumbles into the red-shaded shop, is startled
by a woman screaming, Yes, yes, give it to me baby. You're the king.

She looks up at the glaring screen, sees that the one addressed
with such ardor is no Shah, just a balding naked man
convulsing like one possessed, over a woman's pale body.

The shop sells unspeakable things, but the one that catches her eye
uncannily resembles her dead husband's private part. She knows where
this is. A practical joke on a foreign woman with a broken tongue.

Still, she needs to mend her wall, not be kicked out, eke, survive.
She catapults out of the sex shop and back into Harry's Hardware,
her chin not down, her eyes not averted, her shoulders not sagged.

With flames roasting her cinnamon eyes, burning her bony cheeks,
my cousin politely asks: You help me. I have a hole
in the wall. The wall.

From: Rooftops of Tehran (Red Hen Press, 2008)

The Village Well

You were children, curious. Something splashed
in the belly of the well and she took your hand, descended
into the mouth opened wide,
step by concrete step down its dark spiral throat.

The creature that unhinged the damp stillness
of that well was not a man, not an animal–
just the silhouette of something vast….
You thought it was God, she thought it was djinn,
and then you with fear did not think at all, running back up
breathless, the chill of the well at your heels.

That night you didn't wait for his leg to accidently
rub against yours, or his hand accidentally brush
your thigh as it always did, away from eyes that never
blinked. Instead, you reached for his knee, the flesh and bone
of this gray man who pretended to be daddy's friend. Beneath
the table laden with almond rice your mother had lovingly cooked,
the saffron-stewed lamb, the chicken smothered in herbs…
you squeezed,
squeezed so hard his eyes turned your direction and melted
into a watery scream like the one still rising in the throat of that well.

From: Rooftops of Tehran (Red Hen Press, 2008)

Surgeons

We were surgeons that summer.
We had been mechanics the summer before,
breaking old radios and rusted bicycles
just to put them back together again.

But that summer, the summer Mona disappeared,
we roamed the countryside, scalpels in hand
—razors stolen from our fathers—
trapped lizards, frogs or mice, slit them open
from head to tail, picked their insides with our mothers' tweezers,
examined the entrails with a plastic magnifying glass.
We took meticulous notes – or pretended to.

And at last it was we, the children, who found her
in the woods, beneath green oak leaves and cones.
We were looking for lizards and mice.
At first we didn't know what it was, a dead
animal perhaps, blackened with flies.

Then we saw.
It was she, slit open wide.

From: Rooftops of Tehran (Red Hen Press, 2008)

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