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Shoe.

"Strike down the capital--the thresholds quake;
The pillar falls--its moulded cusps must burst.
A murky smudge leaves Heaven's lights opaque,
And Earth's remaining span is henceforth cursed."

--Raphael Loewe (tr): Ibn Gabirol (1989)

Chicago in My Dreams.

"You have a DNA match!

Overnight in my inbox they arrive
stacked like layers of history,
from Rochester, Cairo, Ottawa,
and other places I never imagined,
to ask me what I want to remember.

I remember we were like the fig trees
someone planted, that no one wanted.
Under stone fields, the clay earth
burned our feet. Where each stone ended
the Mediterranean sand burnt our feet.

We congregated like family,
smoking and slapping tawla tiles,
because there was always time
for that. After rice-milk ladled
for breakfast, we rolled grape leaves,
as if there was time,
as if we belonged.

Here where it will soon be light
again, I sit surrounded by cold fields.
Outside, a clear eye of water,
surrounded by stones. And behind
the brick row-houses along the Melford Road,
sheets hang to dry like in the old country,
though after rain.

When under different stars
we divided into what we each intended,
on separate maps we found
what we thought we were after:
the memory of sand that burned our feet
while tiles slapped nearby,

or meadows cool to the touch
that smell like rain
and the pleasure of arriving home
through woods, alone at a cold eye of water.

And the world between us
wider than any map we could have ever imagined,
filled with something burning that split us
in two, then four, then hundreds."

--Victor Basta via

A tide through buildings sweeps.