Mary McColley
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Ajanbia
I am remembering the open skies of August, how I lay at night
watching a city creep with light, how I lost
myself in the arched stone halls of necklaces, spices, lambs’ heads
how I felt so small, that I could hide between the ridges of dates
How my feet stammered to learn the syllables of the souq, my hair too light.
Gunshots made me cry and all my grandmothers, too, several visas away,
an ocean and a sea, living lives of deaf white cats in boxes,
easy jazz on the radio and puzzles sitting in quiet rooms,
touched by some crooked fingers, some crooked rays of light in afternoons. Mine,
olive brine and white blocks of soap, wrapped in blue-stamped wax paper,
keffiyehs round the necks of dead boys, the walls grieving.
Herbs I could not name steeped in tea, boys shouted at me in sentences without verbs
I only ate the city, devoured
The labyrinths of sky cut between the fine alleyways of palm fronds
that pressed to an absolute sky,
blue footpaths for the birds.
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Margins
Sweat and grass behind my shoulder-blades,
Breeze, metal, glass before my ribs
The palm fronds flicker, rayed like a sun
But night atomizes ! The world will not hold still !
Ants bite, the sky-train growls,
Leaves bear opaque coats of reflected light,
Dull against the sky, my
Stomach hurts, crickets chatter, this indigestible night !
My hair is uncolored blonde or brown, a dark snake of grease, my fingers are
Gleaming like the leaves. Skyscrapers
Smear the grass, sallow whetstones, sharp each blade with light.
Rain flicks upon the tender hollows, the dark underneath my eyes,
This red-dyed heat, this thunder-sky,
This night, will it cry for me?
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Mary McColley is a writer and poet originally from Maine. She has wandered and worked for a number of years in France, Thailand, and Palestine. Her pastimes include killing lobsters and selling street art.
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