Baptism; Carpet; & Makeup Tutorial at Grey Gardens

WINNER OF 2021 SOPOCO EMERGING WRITER FELLOWSHIP

 

 

Baptism

 

for my father’s church my mother dresses my sister

and me in orange burned

one hundred times over prays

 

in Arabic rhythmic applies a steroid cream

to my small blistered crown all my hair

in her palm a loss

I follow her bismillahs swallowing

 

all her syllables

 

 

in Bible study     the teacher points

 

to a map with colors     torched

 

as the ones we wear

desert shades

skin

something left

in the sun you girls

he says pulling apart

a tangerine

you and your foreign mother

you are from here

 

the land of Ezra Isaiah or Daniel

or evil kings

everything in sand

could be home

 

 

but are we Samson’s girls

did he set foxes

fields on fire

in my mother’s country

 

will I ever be wanted like Delilah

hair slick to my waist I want

 

to know when

she cut his hair

as he slept

did it fall like mine

 

this strange

slow halo

 

and what kind of promise

do I make to make

 

something stay fall

upward profuse

 

the opposite of exile

black as my mother’s

worthy of a veil

 

in congregation the preacher

water in square palm turns

my mother my sister

 

makes twin tributaries

of their parted hair

I imagine myself a bride

a jawbone to swing

 

imagine myself the nest

of bees the lion the rope

 

the valley the honey the lock

the loom of my mother’s

quiet worship

 

imagine my hair growing

long in miracle and stained

 

glass light stream

 

if my hair is my country

I want all my people home

 

the preacher lifts

up my hat I did not want to wear

and I wait for God

I wait for God

 

but I have already

lost all my hair

 

 

 


Carpet

 

 

he wants

to know if it matches

my drapes

in this photo flattened

I am so bald

I am a year

without any of it

 

he is unremarkable

dating app lonely

when I was fifteen

a doctor asked

if my pubic hair was

normal

after so you married

a white boy

 

to my mother

his hair was the color

of my mother’s

of my carpet in college

I used to pay

Priscilla the Brazilian forty-five

minutes up the interstate to rip

out all the hair

I thought no one wanted

it took

years to grow

 

back it can take

time to weave

anything

a man introduced

me to his mother outside

Esfahan while she worked

a loom so fine it was threaded

 

metallic on tile no

curtains in her house

he wiped

dead dragonflies from wind

shield glass asked

could you ever

love me

 

I said

No but he kept

the question over

turning their wings

in his hands

is loneliness anything

but a question asked over

 

and over and over

or the one made

to answer is it always

a symptom

of loss

 

does it always match

the body

that holds it

I am years without

a touch a room a mouth

a reason to pull

the blinds I must tell you

I was loved

once

I understand

 

the wings

the thread the question

you’ve lost

nothing if you’ve torn

it out yourself

so what he really wants

to know is does loss

match loss match

 

loss match

loss

match

loss

 

 

 


Makeup Tutorial at Grey Gardens

 

 

should I show you how my aunt did me

she cut my cheekbones from baby fat

with a set she brought from Turkey

and held my face and kissed my lips

after drawing them in umber

 

her sponges stained and sick sweet made

the night around my eyes and she copied

her tattoo eyebrows onto mine then dragged

stars against my hairless arms

 

no one else looked so grown up

at the school dance my teachers balked fish

faced and no one asked me to sway

 

how long did it take you to figure out

how to frame your face and how old

is your pencil I see your eyes are hooded

like the cape the sweater the skirt you pin

like mine it takes practice to know our shadows

 

Edie your nose is running

like mine too without any hair

don’t be embarrassed

here is a tissue

to hold yourself with

while I contour fox eye

full face I refuse falsies

they don’t stay with us

and the light can be

cruel I hear everyone

like us is blessed with

good skin clear as fall

sky poreless a petal

 

everyday I make

a wing I miss

my eyelashes

a little bit less

Edie let me define your

mouth come make a kiss

 

Aria Curtis is an Iranian-American writer from Atlanta. She holds an MFA from Arizona State University and is the recipient of fellowships from the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing as well as a 2021 Georgia Review SoPoCo Emerging Writer Fellowship. She has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Offing, The Shallow Ends, Yemassee, and elsewhere.