from Words are also a Province

Mariana

Saturday afternoons and especially Sundays,
you don’t really see anyone out on the streets besides
beggars, crazy people, and thugs.
Poor teenagers, in bright colors, talking loudly.
Their foreheads furrowed, as if
they were learning the alphabet right then.

Seen from the eighth story,
on the narrow street separating the building and the cemetery,
the only ones out now are Mariana and her friends.
Mariana sells candles and votives, matches and incense,
flower soil, flowers, and flower wreathes,
real flowers
and artificial flowers
in a white thermopane shack: Mariana’s Flower Shop.
She’s got a TV in there and, in the winter, an electric heater.
No one’s stopping by anymore,
it’s past six p.m.,
it’s Sunday.
Mariana sits on a stool in front of Mariana’s Flower Shop
eating sunflower seeds.
Hanging around her are a few boys
in tight t-shirts,
skinny boys with their hands stuck
in their jean pockets,
staring blankly,
preened boys, with well-trimmed hair
dyed fluorescent colors.
Blue, blond, fuchsia, green.
Mariana looks like their mother,
with her bulging breasts
ready to slip out of her Calvin Klein tank top,
with her blond highlights framing her cheeks
that are always unshaven.
Mariana looks like their father,
with her big hands,
with her broad back, perfect for hauling
bags of flower soil,
with her sturdy hips
wrapped in her long, flowy skirt.
She could hold two boys at once
in her lap.
Mariana is kind, she lets them hang around her.
The boys listen to her, motionless,
night after night they gather
in front of Mariana’s Flower Shop.
Mariana talks and spits the shells on the pavement.
Her high-pitched voice
reaches the eighth story,
even when the window’s closed.
Even so, it’s impossible to tell
what she’s talking about.




The Provincials

If someone were to look at me from behind
and see me looking out the window now,
my brown mane
hanging from the back of a woman or a little girl,
they might think:
The very picture of loneliness!
And, to some extent, they’d be right.
But only until their word,
“loneliness,”
runs into my word,
“provincial.”
That’s when I’d start to be right.
Though not completely.
And I could tell them about how
we’re all, most of the time,
a bunch of provincials.
Compared with what is seen and
compared with what is unseen,
compared with what can be said and
especially compared with what can’t be said.
About how evening falls.
And what it looks like from the eighth story.
How the wind blew open the kitchen window and
a man is calling his woman little wren.
How, at Mariana’s Flower Shop, Mariana’s watching TV
and eating sunflower seeds.
Better not try telling all this to someone.
Better just to watch and listen.
And by listening, to find yourself
alongside the dusk, Mariana and her sunflower seeds,
the wind that blew open the window,
and little wren.




Adila

Saturday afternoons, but especially Sundays,
you don’t really feel like leaving the house.
On the streets, only
beggars, crazy people, and thugs.
Poor teenagers, in bright colors, talking loudly.
Their foreheads furrowed, as if
they were learning the alphabet right then.
Adila is at her window on the eighth story.
It’s hot.
The truth is each word
is only the tip of an iceberg.
Below teem nameless meanings,
of which one sometimes
is drawn to the surface
by the force of the word on top,
and wedged in there, among the elemental meanings.
Words are also a province
when it comes to the lively meanings beneath them,
meanings unknown and unclaimed there, above.
A vertical province.
For example, someone says to you:
Adila, you’re all tense!
And, after a few days, someone else says:
Adila, you’re all tense!
You might think they’re referring to the same thing.
When in fact each “tense”
is a pump that wants to yank something else
up from the swarm of meanings below.
Besides,
every one of us is each the tip of an iceberg.
Some qui-et-ly sit
their butts on top of all possible meanings.
Others constantly fidget like a hen over an egg.
The first kind, if they get in a fight,
know how to call things by their names.
The others, if they want to say “mountain,”
are liable to write a novel.
Or simply
look at you a certain way
and for that to mean “mountain.”
Same goes for “door handle.”
When they want to swear,
same thing,
a novel or
a certain pursing of lips.
That doesn’t mean, however,
that you’ll never hear them say
a simple “life’s a bitch” now and then
or a regular “good morning.”




You’re So Adorable

Adila goes to the market.
Adila goes to work.
To buy potatoes and containers of chicken liver.
To make money to pay her mortgage.
From time to time
a man comes to her studio apartment.
Adila turns her back to the window.
The back of a woman or a little girl,
with a brown mane hanging down it.
She switches on the light.
The light comes on from under the lamp’s green hat
and spreads throughout the studio.
The man brought a bottle of wine.
He opened it.
With him, words are unnecessary.
If she tries to talk about something—
about teenagers with furrowed foreheads,
about Mariana and her boys,
about how a man can call his woman little w . . . —
he interrupts her: you’re so adorable!
And so, whenever he comes,
Adila disappears with him
for a while
and only the light spreading
from under the green hat
over the glasses of wine . . .




Screws, Washers, Nails, Bolts

At night especially,
the older man
who lives below my studio apartment
drops small objects—
screws, washers, nails, bolts—,
that roll around on the tiles
until dawn.
I sit at the window
and see the candles lit in the cemetery,
in the autumn,
when the trees have shed their leaves,
or in early spring,
before they’ve sprouted.
On a night like this,
I heard the neighbor’s door slam.
Then the elevator started up,
it stopped with a thud
on the seventh floor,
it went down,
and I saw how,
shaking all over,
his head wobbling back and forth,
the neighbor went across the way,
to the cemetery gate,
where someone was waiting for him.
Eventually
he came back.
I heard the elevator start up again,
stopping with a thud
on the seventh floor,
the neighbor’s door slamming,
and then
screws, washers, nails, bolts
rolling around on the tiles.
And I thought:
that’s also sometimes the rattle made
by the unimaginable meaning of words
when someone
tries to draw them to the surface,
so that a certain word
would no longer be a province.
I asked myself then:
if I were to go to him
and say
tartine
or
quasi-unfamiliar
or
to handle a relationship,
might that stop the rolling around on tiles
of the screws, washers, nails, bolts?
But my neighbor’s studio
is a center
and I
am a provincial.