KNOT Magazine
Fall Issue 2022
Arthur Heifetz
A Second Life
They came running
when they heard the crash
in the ravine
and found our car
resting on its roof
like a defeated beast,
its doors swung wide
its wheels still spinning,
its horn still blearing.
I screamed your name
and when I saw you
sitting in the dust
nursing your cut leg
I shouted with the villagers
Allahu Akhbar.
At the clinic
they closed the wound
with thread for sewing saddles
and nothing to dull the pain.
You squeezed my hand
as I looked on contritely.
God has granted you,
the medic said, hayat thaan,
a second life.
Be sure to use it well.
Four decades later
as you lay dying
in our bedroom
amid a clutter of tubes,
too drugged to speak,
I re-arranged the covers
and found the scar now faint
and thought of
all the journeys we had made,
the songs we sang,
the games we played
in this, our second life.
(previously published in Sukoon)
Assimilation
Roberta, né Rawa in Iraq,
weary of explaining to
the salesgirls in cosmetics
her reasons for wearing a hijab,
decided to let her lustrous hair
flow down
and no longer cringed
when her husband’s friends,
emboldened by cocktails,
gave her a small hug,
but she retained a strong distaste
for pork and household pets
and on her slender neck
she wore the hand of Fatima
just in case the Evil Eye
should take the opportunity
to look her way.
New Year's Poem #2
O to be in Tehran at Nowruz
and watch your dark,
seductive eyes
catch sparks from the flames.
You chase away the mangy jube dogs
sniffing at the gutters
and leap like a doe
through the fires
raging in the streets
your head covered with a black chador,
your son nestled in your arms
gazing in wonder
at the conflagrations.
You give to the flames
your sallow face of winter.
and take from them
the redness of pomegranates
and sweet wine,
of Rumi’s love poems,
of the robes of Haji Firuz
which rustle as his blackened face
bursts into song.
You've arranged the apples,
garlic, berries and pudding.
the sabzeh sprouting from the bowl
like a cleric’s green beard.
You’ve eaten one decorated egg
for each of your children.
You’ve fed the goldfish
circling in their bowls.
You’re ready for whatever
the new year
may choose to deliver.
(originally published in Up the River)
Desert Views
Thronged by children
banging on the doors,
we’ve left the last bled
in our dusty white Renault
and turned onto a piste
that hugs the canyon rim,
bouncing from rock to rock,
watching the copper vistas open up
at every hairpin turn
like desert flowers
thirsting for winter rains.
We’ve wandered off the map
with no one to direct us,
not the silent Bedouins
astride their camels,
mummified in their brown burnooses
or the gold-toothed women
in purple robes and silver chains,
clicking their tongues
like disapproving hens.
This very night
we’ll make love
for the first time
in a hut of woven reeds
with moonlight
streaming through the chinks.
But we know nothing yet
of warm wool blankets
piled against the chill
of desert winds.
We haven’t seen the stars
above the gorge
incised in the pitch-black sky.
We know only the rock-strewn road,
and the fear of not reaching
the grove of date-palms
by nightfall.
(originally published in Mused)
Art Heifetz teaches ESL to mostly Middle Eastern students in Richmond, Va. He served in the Peace Corps in Tunisia for two years
and also taught in Iran.
He has had 140 poems published in 11 countries, recently winning second prize in the Reuben Rose international competition in Israel for a poem about Peru.
See more of his work at polishedbrasspoems.com.