Homecoming by Laila Staubmann

I

I’m 21, bottom fish lip snagged upwards, 

wind clapping through the open car door. 

Upwards – rotting peach melting in the sky, 

dribbling so close I could taste it. 

I’m 21, I left the oranges out back home, 

10,000 miles away, shrivelled and stone. 

From the airplane we saw ants on eggshells; 

here, the bone-plates are left out to dry. 

And you,
shoulder weighing on my shoulder,
eyes a maze of mountains,
veil shimmering like ant skin.
We could make fruit salad tonight.
I could bubble fishlipped
through Arabic.
You could sing these tower-blocks down. 

II

It was Abraham who learnt that sacrifice was done on a mountainside, 

Ishmael didn’t die that day, but King James still bleached
them both white. 

Embalmed in leather and wrapped tight with
silk between the pages.
Prophet’s knife became a guillotine
a thousand miles high, for a preacher-bird
on his podium. 

It was Solomon who learnt that death could outrun the wind, 

And here it comes. 

Unhooks your lips from one end to another 

Hands me your smile like
red and white strips of peppermint.
The ants will eat good tonight. 

And these American giants will eat good tonight. 

Wake ankle deep in brown tower-blocks 

‘til they’re muddy with red.
Everyone I know has heard of 

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. So we could be fish or ants, 

Crushed for food or fun or oil or just because they 

Couldn’t hear us from so far high.
Couldn’t feel how a war can turn a country mute. 

No playgrounds, no chorus of chatter, 

just handfuls of earth passed under desks,
until they slip 

between sticky fingers.