The Master’s House

To wave from the porch To let go of the grudge To disrobe To recall Ethel Rosenberg’s green polka-dotted dress To call your father and say I’d forgotten how nice everyone in these red states can be To hear him say Yes, long as you don’t move in next door To recall every drawn curtain in the apartments you have lived To find yourself at 33 at a vast expanse with nary a papyrus of 
guidance, with nary a voice, a muse, a model To finally admit out loud then I want to go home To have a dinner party of intellectuals with a bell, long-armed, lightly-tongued, at each setting To sport your dun gown To revel in face serums To be a well-calibrated burn victim to fight the signs of aging To assure financial health To be lavender sachets and cedar lining and all the ways the rich might hide their rot To eye the master’s bone china To pour diuretic in his coffee and think this erosive to the state To disrobe when the agent asks you to To find a spot on any wall to stare into To develop the ability to leave an entire nation thusly, just by staring at a spot on the wall, as the lead-vested agent names article by article what to remove To do this in order to do the other thing, the wild thing To say this is my filmdom, The Master’s House, and I gaze upon it and it is good To discuss desalinization plants and de terroir To date briefly a banker, a lapsed Marxist, and hear him on the phone speaking in billions of dollars, its residue over the clear bulbs of his eyes, as he turns to look upon your nudity To fantasize publishing a poem in the New Yorker eviscerating his little need To set a bell at each intellectual’s table setting ringing idea after idea, and be the simple-footed help, rushing to say Yes? To disrobe when the agent asks you to To find a spot on any wall to stare into To develop the ability to leave an entire nation thusly, just by staring at a spot on the wall To say this is my filmdom, The Master’s House To recall the Settler who from behind his mobile phone said I’m filming you for God To recall this sad God, God of the mobile phone camera, God of the small black globe and pixelated eye above the blackjack table at Harrah’s and the metal, toothed pit of Qalandia checkpoint the same To recall the Texan that held the shotgun to your father’s chest, sending him falling backward, pleading, and the words came to him in Farsi To be jealous of this, his most desperate language To lament the fact of your lamentations in English, English being your first defeat To finally admit out loud then I want to go home To stand outside your grandmother’s house To know, for example, that in Farsi the present perfect is called the 
relational past, and is used at times to describe a historic event whose effect is still relevant today, transcending the past To say, for example,Shah dictator bude-ast translates to The Shah was a dictator, but more literally to The Shah is was a dictator To have a tense of is-was, the residue of it over the clear bulb of your eyes To walk cemetery after cemetery in these States and nary a gravestone reading Solmaz To know no nation will be home until one does To do this in order to do the other thing, the wild thing, though you’ve forgotten what it was