From Baghdad and Kraków—Fact, Fiction, Query, Plea
I.
They are right heres, my father answers, and he points
to his temple. I realize then there are no photographs
of my Muslim grandma. Nobody tooks them back then,
my father continues, flips open his hands to show me,
bare, though a large photo of his own father commands
his bedroom wall. A robed man, turbaned man,
a man I’ll never know except this presence—eclipsing
something, someone, but what, who? I couldn’t say,
they are not there. Only the apparition, or my suspicion?—
and now the familiar rise in my throat—The esophagus,
where your fears hide, fears abide!—My therapist
loves her body-talk, body-shock. Still, I probe, advance
more questions, steal bits from others’ memories
as I try to recreate my paternal grandma, my namesake—
‘Aya’ for short, meaning ‘to swiftly fly.’
II.
Also, no photos of my Jewish gram from Poland—
that is, until she immigrated to the US, stubborned her way out
between the two wars. I imagine her small-shyness that day
against the NY skyline—iron buildings sawtooth the clouds
as seagulls caw, tighten their circles. Ellis Island and ten thousand
dissonate strangers. Their names indelible in the passenger logs,
though prologues, saltwater and fresh scars go unrecorded.
III.
Come, bend a little closer, a small bottle you’ll find at the base
of my mouth. Everyone has their seraphim and a place to carry flowers.
Sprigs of lilac, pink chrysanthemums, purple hyacinths—all Gram’s favorites,
and gardenia petals for my brother and me, to sweeten our bedtime stories.
But Gram’s lips flicker, then shrivel like dead tulips when pressed
for snippets about her childhood. Time, not always a salve for memory—
No children in the ghetto, only small Jews, the Gentiles had slurred.
Gram drags a hand down her cheek—
her two brothers and sister, their unblue eyes unspared.
IV.
Small trace, also, of my Muslim grandma’s childhood or any of her years.
I wonder, did she ever receive flowers?
Something once about some wool, I believe, was important.
V.
On my left shoulder, a scratch sheet of velum, a window’s glimpse
into my weak, my rue, and all the sediment of my shame.
On my right, a supple breeze of myrtle. Angels congregate, repose
to slip off their wings. Offer poems, baklava, marjoram tea—
look how Allah provides.
VI.
And already the bright sun lowers, green hills flower mustard blossoms.
I sit at the stern of a small boat. The Sea of Galilee.
I face Mecca, southeast, kneel and almost pray. I face Jerusalem,
southwest, and suddenly a cell phone plays Hatikvah, ‘the hope’—
the Israeli national anthem. I mouth-along the words,
those I remember—some of them, Eretz … Yerushalayim,
the music’s pull from my bones and home Gram fortressed
for me, with toothpicks and gumdrops after the kids called me—
Heeb, Kike, Muzzie, Ay-rab.
VII.
I have held-up these cut-out stars, my two grandmothers,
for a lifetime now—arcing my curious arms, my wands to the universe.
And yet, so little I have solved since sundown, the careful geometry
of nocturnal clouds, the slow shapes of my laughing cry.
The end won’t be so bad, someone once said.
Animals, too, pull-up their paths and rest.
Still, in this world with bittersweet rain and the dying things,
what am I?—this sprawling search, this strangeness….
Even Muhammad, who could not read, would meditate
with the birds, song-quiet. Dream, dream in pheromones.
Soon, all that rustles are my mind-heart thoughts
which island my heart-mind words—a house built
of mortar and sky, wind and stone.
Tara Mesalik MacMahon is a Muslim-Jewish poet, child of an immigrant father from Iraq, and American-born mother, the daughter of immigrants from Poland. Most recently Tara’s poetry was selected winner of 2024 The James Hearst Poetry Prize from NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. Her first chapbook of poems, "Barefoot Up the Mountain," was winner of OPEN COUNTRY PRESS’s Chapbook Contest. Tara’s poems also appear in: NIMROD, POET LORE, RHINO, RADAR, JABBERWOCK REVIEW, RED HEN PRESS’S "New Moons" Anthology by North American Muslim Writers, among many others, several include prizes and honors. She lives on an island with her husband and rescue dog.