Deema Shehabi and Marilyn Hacker

From ‘Diasporenga’
A collaboration in alternating renga

After she died, he’d lie down

on the great white bed
where she used to comb

his eyebrows with her fingers

until he fell asleep. He’d wake

to the early evening

muezzin, the roasting freekah,
and the poem:

Sitting in a garden
ropes of wisteria.

Sitting on damp grass,

she recites the Fatiha
on Dickinson’s lawn.

Slowly, her Anglophone friend

repeats each verse after her.
“When I go home, I’ll
either build a house or buy
a plot for a grave.”

“Insh’allah, you’ll build a house.

Keep that line for a poem.”

Green house with large

veranda, orange-black
swirls on tulip tiles.

Ibaa’ slices lemons,

dips them into salt, smiles

as the other women sing:

“Tal’aa min beit âb’ouha.”
In a few hours, she’ll wax

her entire body. Lemon sores

on tongue, newborn baby skin,

A sore on his tongue,

the accent he has now in
his father’s language — 

again, a taxi driver

asked him “Âîna darasta?”

High-rise in Detroit,
hospital in south Beirut,
every cloned airport — 
razed port town’s morning-coffee
syllables he’s never heard.

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