Singing into Soil

How embarrassing it’ll be when my Bengali neighbor
steps out of her swinging screen door to water
her garden and sees me filming myself,
camera tilted from a tripod, fussing
at the head-sized hole I’ve dug
in my backyard, kneeling,
bowing in the direction
of Mecca; plunging
my head into the
earth to sing
a somber
Arabic
song.

Chaplin

When the captain braced us for coarse clouds,
I used a straw broom to paint Ceasefire
in dripping green block letters
on the plane’s olive wood exit door.

It thrust open and my eyes dried
as I was sucked into the assaulting sky.
I maneuvered the broom between my legs,
a teetering sensation in my groin,

hurtling toward the Spanish Garden
in Jericho where I met my parents
and we walked together to the town square
making meaningless conversation.

A thick crowd was gathered like
flies trapped in a honeyed plastic bag
in the greenish afternoon, sitting atop
car hoods and squatting on the curb,

leaning on concrete flower pots,
against storefronts and each others’ shoulders,
hundreds huddled in the manara,
laughing at the Charlie Chaplin movie
projected on the outdoor screen—

my laughter, masked by the crowds’,
uncontrollable and unhinged, my stomach
seizing, feeling I may choke, my eyes sore,
bleary with tears at the life I never lived.