Susan Atefat-Peckham
Poems from That Kind
of Sleep (Coffee House Press)
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Dates Three days and
they wrapped his washed
body in muslin, no lumbering
sounds of coffins carried, only
the white ripple of
cloth. I sat back where all women sat, staring
from behind a wooden net,
carved and set aside.
The others swayed as if crows
under the mirrored dome of the
mosque webbed in their
chadors, breathing cloth in and out of
their wailing, in and
out. Their black heads bobbed against
the carved light of the wooden
boundary, the roar and echo of
men beating themselves downstairs,
pounding their chests tightly, fists
on flesh, to the rhythm of a prayer
for the dead. A woman stood
and held a tray, the edges of
her chador clenched in her teeth
and wrapped so tightly around her
face that it cut angles into her
cheeks. She offered us a silver tray
of fruit as chanting grew, beating
grew, that fleshy rhythm.
And the woman with dates
walked the aisles offering the
shrivelled skin and its sweet
stench on a silver tray, making her way
from one woman to the
next. Somewhere under Iranian earth,
seamless cloth lay on its side, a
turned face frozen under a
concrete canopy, legs bent toward
Mecca. She lowered the tray. I reached for
a date, and my mouth watered to
taste its sugar. Originally
published in Puerto del Sol Return to Susan Atefat-Peckham’s
Faculty Page
Marvari The Pearl
Tree —For Joel He asks if I
remember them—I remember few, I
say. Leaning deep into leaves, my uncle
pinched and turned white berries from the pearl
tree in hands as old and twisted as the
branches. He rushed to where I waited, uncurled his
palm and tossed them, rolling into linens
spread on my lap. He squeezed my fingers
into his and pushed the silver point through each
fruit, tugging on the thread until my palms
were wet with juice. I feel the
grip and weight of a white necklace soft and warm
in the curve of my neck. I return to the garden,
alive again with yellow flowers and the fresh
scent of cucumbers. I am tall enough now,
but he holds my fingers back and thrusts
his own arthritic hand in leaves, his mind fixed
on a memory. One wet finger unfolds and
reveals a palmful of pearls. He asks if I
remember him. Originally
published in Prairie Schooner Return to Susan Atefat-Peckham’s
Faculty Page
Nikita’s Grave
I’ve often been told by my father I
once could fit in his palm, his fingers
bent to the rounded weight, my bottom
swelling to the creases of his hand. I’ve been told
of my sister buried somewhere in upstate New
Jersey, eight years older than me, named
for the daylight crackling of branches
and rain. The doctor measured Mother’s hips
too big. No air to the brain. Nikita’s hands
moved quick. Then stopped. Father says he
took her away and drove her alone
through highways and trash, to bury his pain in
Jersey humidity. There’s no point in a funeral
for an immigrant child just turned American.
How he hurried back to echoes, walls, hard
with a sterile ringing of two days’ labor, a
silent space where Mother waited, quiet and empty,
her hands filling her lap. She was
beautiful, he says. And I’m not sure whom he means
as he smiles at the heat in his hands,
filling its folds with shadows of flushed
skin.
I’ve learned to work around the
empty spaces, watch winter peel birches
inward, see snow settle and thread branches
November spares. I hear muddied noises of a
plot peeling in wet earth where a proud
Iranian immigrant planted his firstborn daughter, left
her dust its place to soak and brush in water.
Only the dying fill with sounds
and words and paint and clay. Somewhere in
Jersey my name is written, stiff and
white.
It is autumn. The empty define.
There is red beauty in dying from the edges
in. Old leaves unwind, circle, knit the air,
the black roots. I settle along spaces people
weave, petals crotchet black branches white
before they fill with green. Return to Susan Atefat-Peckham’s
Faculty Page |
New
Unpublished Poems
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3. Clean
He’s already in the ground,
Father says, his grief wound in
static. My son kicks in my womb,
two weeks from birth, not enough
room. I hear instead Grandfather’s voice
from Tehran, Dastet- o-beshoor, Wash your hands. Wash your hands,
And see the razor, the brush, the soap, the
mornings I woke at dawn and found him
sitting in roses, ready for prayer,
facing west, legs bent, hands turning over
and over each other like domed
mosques, circle his chin, cheeks.
An arc of silver cleans his jaw. And hands
gleam to torn edges of bread, a cherry
preserve on each flat wedge bleeding red
into the asphalt.
It is time to pray, he
would say, his hands washed and
raised. When songs of morning prayer
streaked his arms, he bowed into sunlight.
And I wonder how
busy I must have been at noon when Mother called
Nebraska saying, Talk to Grandpa,
Talk to Grandpa, Fast. And I was thinking
of the place I needed to be instead,
already late, not knowing this was it.
The dying don’t wait. Later, she told me
about the surgery, said, When I called he stood
in a pool of manure, Dried blood
you know, From the wound that cancer
carved in his throat, Never healed, she
stopped. He was shamed, she said, You know how clean
your Grandfather always was. In
some still world lay the brush, razor, bowl of water
heaving its surface with sun and soap, his
hands
Praying palms facing Mecca,
a red sky, La ila ha illalah, knees snapped
to the earth
Nine months pregnant, the
unborn wrapped in flesh fabrics, heart
beating, I imagine his arms under ground,
wound in muslin, a clean shaven face
sticking from a cloth window, his moustache
bristled white, the rest of him wrapped
as tradition would have it, in
cotton. I imagine his fingers bent beneath the
threads, cherry preserve stain in his nails,
the tips meeting his thumbs, red silent
mouths, opening,
Grandfather I have washed
my hands, I have washed my
hands, I have washed my hands. Return to Susan Atefat-Peckham’s
Faculty Page
13. The Memory of Cells Grandfather,
memory must be subatomic.
The cells remember when the tumor
blooms, choking silent the neck where
only darkness once breathed
through and through, a sore heart seething in
the ribs of your throat, a seed hanging by one
root, an albaloo fruit. That tiny red
thought—it’s chromosomal. The cells—they
remember all the dark passage ways
of the body. I carry your dying inside
me like this,
remembering your first
symptom: unable to swallow, when you
swallowed all your life mosst-o saddeh, hoping to keep doctors away, swallowed all
that lean beef and lamb, sure to cut
the fat off first, no liquor, no
drugs. What good did it do? I remember your
never setting heels on the street
of anyone you even suspected had
cancer. As if you could breathe the
sickness in—we all have our
superstitions. I think, Don’t tempt the body, this,
when I force my legs to jog
down our suburban Michigan
streets, far from the hot tar Tehran smells
of your house, of wet asphalt, your
body, your soap, force myself through
echoes of your voice praying,
through lake effect heat, wind, sleet, fog,
whatever, as if running from the bone
baring paring knife, bowls full of
marrow, and I’m sure I know how I
will die, the pull of thighs, tearing
through tangles of leaves, walls cluster
quiet midwestern homes, toward the
lake while the future courses through the
beating heart, over, and over, keeping
time.
Pushing through
blue burning water,
to sky, through torn seams of membranes,
we burst from the deep, dark black
mouth of memory. |