Sarah Taban

suppose everyone believed such a thing, I tell my father. Everyone, he says, can dance naked. Everyone

is not his        daughter. I am watching a woodpecker on the budding maple outside my window. I am at the edge

of this bird’s strong beak, drumming at the bark of my mind. Sunlight falls over this day like night-time, when my

lover casts her ochre scarf over the lamp, dances a        little. Suppose you didn’t believe some pleasures were incorrect.

Like the woodpecker, I find a task             with every tree. Anxiety, dancing naked, that I bed with. Now, I examine

each morning like a decision. Sometimes they arrive like a wagon of fresh-caught fish at my door, thrashing in a

slow, miserable way.            Happiness is my reward after an endless boring, a long tongue reaching for its feast.

Suppose I was made like that,        just the material it takes to withstand my own obsessions. Baba points to himself.

Is anguish a good name for the surprise of my mind                 outside itself? My language grows from such

incorrect pleasures. My grandmother hangs an evil eye on my mouth. Twenty years pass until a lover    crosses,

knows how to pick a good fish. A good catch. Spring, dancing             naked, that I dream with. Hold the doors, as I

sprint, making that train, a well-chosen morning. A whole confection of them. Somehow, I forgot I was my father’s

daughter. Cast an ochre scarf over my lover, an evil eye between every kiss. Suppose anguish, pecking,

until one evening. Suppose I was made    like that.

suppose I was made like that. Self-assured. Quick to move into dance, in a seamless

way that flirted with            the world, casually. Like that. A woman with that cool-girl air, the kind

who you see, out in the world, and are both affirmed and shamed by. That slightly hard-to-get

walk, always going somewhere she is so wanted. Fashionably flushed arrival, saying cortado

and setting her bag down in one unrehearsed motion. Imagine how I would swoon at that.

Allah wanted a horse, so told the wind     condense yourself. Suppose such precision was

employed in this woman’s making. Her sorrow  honeysuckle. A thread of saffron goldening

in warm milk, a blush          like that. Green thumb, baker’s dozen, has change, not a morning person,

her grouch endearing like a messy bun. Suppose when I wanted something, it also     galloped

into being. A muscled obedience. Her hand, the soft palm that             I have been in. Suppose

that kind of belonging. No need to unlearn anything, which I must. No need to      sieve history

for some soup of language, which I must. Time to brown butter. A woman like that. Time to

feed what makes the            bread. Suppose I were that first horse. So elementally wanted it must

come with a   catch. A muscled obedience. Suppose sorrow riding             my back.