Nomi Stone

“I would make love to one of our whores before I would fuck one of their bourgeoisie.” There was a proverb, like this: Don’t trust a         if he becomes a         even though he remains a       for forty years. And the sister opposite proverb: Don’t trust a       even though he has been in the grave for forty years. It was a difficult day, a bomb had spun open a bus, and children had been crushed down by a machine. Each wondered if he was born too soon, if later would have been better, if 40 + 40 + 40 + 40

To love is to tell the story of the world.     There was an ocean with a boat     mountains     a meadow     too painful to stare at directly. Haven’t I been here before? Yes.     No:     not quite here. “It is not as if,” the philosopher writes, “an I exists independently over here and then simply loses a you over there.” In the mist, a man rigs the Suzelle, little red boat. Loved labored for months, learning to tie the right knot. The exact and only knot that will keep the vessel tethered. She rehearsed for the worst possible thing. “The attachment to you,” it is written, “is part of what composes who I am.” I know/knew those hands, hers. I watched her dust the sourdough with flour at midnight a moon between her fingers.     Gone went Loved. But the half-world of her in me was me.     It was lit by the moon.

Conversations with a Muslim friend 1 So, if you don’t believe in full it means you don’t believe. Words tumble onto the rock. A book happens. Okay then tell me about heaven’s beautiful food and women. Who are these women?

The people who live here do two things: their faces whiten past you or blacken into you. Girls are not supposed to come to islands by themselves; did no one tell you? You found the highest hill, away from their whistles, their eyes. Up here only windy grass, the blow of sea that brought you. Only a few cigarette butts, pistachio shells. They come here, but hardly. The house you make is sticks and burrs. Dirt on white knuckles. The sea through the cracks. They do not talk to you anymore, or look at you, your first wish. The wind and sea are full of stomachs: now, learn to disappear into them. Your house’s slender frame catches fire one day. You hear them buzzing below. They watch, they stand, wild brightness from the hill reflecting in each eye. Light. Birds almost green among the sparks. Is it the sun? No, the moon has caught the sun in its mouth. The moon is nothing but the sun letting it see itself. The question comes again, do you have too much faith in people, or too little? Like when you were sitting on the ledge by the sea and three large boys’ shadows stubbed the grass. Your first thought was, so they will make me fall. But they don’t make you fall. Whether they are afraid of you or you of them, whether they are jeering, is not clear. This is the island with the hill with the house with the girl with the fire inside. Afterwards they climb to the top to look at something ruined close-up. They touch the door, soft with ash: the body, amongst the branches and birds, is white. The face catches the sun’s light.

My last Sabbath, I follow the girls, who sneak into the wedding tent, scattered with sun flower seeds and remnants of celebration. They each stand up on a table. Take a crushed beer can as a microphone, sing and move their fifteen-year-old hips. I watch, clap for them, until a small face peers in the door. A boy. His face white with something. The door slamming, his very small fist holding it shut, having found what was inside wrong. Enough, I tell him; enough! He leaves. The girls dance again, but less bold. Look: the boy has come back, is looking you hard in the eye, through the crack of the door. There, in his hand, a neon plastic BB gun. He does this for his grandmother and for his son.