Cold slice of moon silvering the church
steeple and late sunflowers: of course
it’s me, of course I’m all here— don’t
you see how what I am is made of these
remembered fragments? Rusted dowel from
a fence, chipped tile from the house
we sold to the Iranian merchant with a limp.
His youngest son Shaheen sometimes looked
over the living room window into my parents’
yard, where roosters drummed their black
and orange wings against the cages when
they crowed. Wound through with heady scent
from ginger flowers, the shadow vines left
on the wall as grey trompe-l’œil, long
after the plants were cut down: faint screen
no wind could ever ruffle or disarrange. These
things move into the viewfinder: not the crowded
jeepney stops nor the palimpsest of shop signs
and billboards; not the gas station wreathed
in diesel fumes on the other side of the street.