Tourists

In Tunis we try to discuss divorce And dying but give up to lounge With rug merchants under a plum tree. From its corner the lamb’s severed head Watches the flies drink from its eyes And its fat disappear into the fire. The light rinses the edge of your sandal, The two wasps that ornament the blur Of screened window. My grandmother Would have loved a night like this. In the wind chimes I can hear her tea cart With its china rolling through Cook Street’s Stony yard one summer when I was always Thirsty, and she moved like a figure On a clock from my lawn chair to the cart, Or swabbed me with alcohol, or cut My hair with the straight razor. I was a week out of the hospital. Beneath my breasts an incision was crossed With stitches of surgical thread. The scalpel came so close it gave My heart a quick kiss. I nearly died. Years later I can still see the skin Flutter on the inside of my left breast And my heart limps like a great uncle Who, because he was a Jew and lame, Was dragged by cossacks across the steppes. He became a friend asking a favor Of a horse who ran so hard, so perfectly Hard, that the green grass rose to meet him.