Pulse: 1

1. It wasn’t over a woman that war began, but it’s better To see it this way, my myth professor loved to say, a man From the South rumored to extort the bodies of college girls Into higher grades. My girlfriend of the time told me so — He was a creep, she Got an A in the class and liked his joke about religion As self-mutilation, it was Ramadan then and, O Helen, I was fasting. I lie awake in a desert night east Of the Atlantic on the verge of rain, the catapulted grains Of sand on hot zinc roof, the rustle of leaves, the flap Of peeling bark on trees whose names I do not know, and where Would I find a botany guide here. Water flowed Like a river from the Jabal once. There were elephant pools, alligator Streams, and a pond for the devil to speak in human tongues. All desiccant names now after an earthquake Shuffled the ground decades ago. It will rain soon, I’m assured, since nothing has stopped The birds from migration. All the look-alikes Are already here: the stork, the heron. The white flying flowers, the ibis, and the one That aesthetizes you more.