National Poetry Month (okay, one day late)

On Loving a Saudi Girl by Carina Yun

After your beloved leaves, you will take
a ten-hour red-eye flight back to America.
At baggage claim, you will wait for your bag
to drop onto the conveyer belt, then drag
the weight of Sultan Ahmed across the terminal–
the soumak rug, candlesticks, and pashmina scarves.
In Istanbul, muezzin will call out five
times a day from the minaret. It's heard
on loudspeaker in every house, and every storefront.
You will wake to morning adhan, not knowing
whether to repent for those moments spent with her.
What is it called when you are wrong to love?
In front of the airport, your mother will find you
soaked with rain. "What happened?" she will ask.
You won't speak. She will spring open your
father's green umbrella and hover.

National Poetry Month (okay, one day late)

Swan Girls by Theodora Goss

They are so lovely, the wild swan girls:

white wings and absence . . .



1.       How to recognize a swan girl.



She will have delicate wrists.

You will be able to circle her wrists

with your hands. No, don't try it:

you don't hold swan girls, not like that.

Any suggestion of captivity sends them flying

off on white swan wings, or on high heels

across a street or continent.



They can't bear to be caught.



No, look at her wrists: skin over bone, with faint

pinpricks where the pinions go.



2.       How to catch a swan girl.



Feign lack of interest.

Stare off into the distance, at a tree perhaps

or a beach, or the New York skyline.

Turn to her. Be polite, almost too polite.

Ask a question to which she doesn't know the answer.

(Will it snow tomorrow? What are clouds made of?

How do you say eternity in Norwegian?)



Interest her, and keep her interested,

or she will fly off.



3.       How to keep a swan girl.



You can't, not in a house or an apartment,

not in a city, sometimes not even a country.

When she telephones, you will ask, where are you?

When she laughs, it will sound

so far away, and in the background

you will hear waves, or a language you don't understand.

4.       How to marry a swan girl.



Steal her coat of feathers.

This part always goes badly.



5.       How to lose a swan girl.



Wait. Eventually, she will go somewhere else.

If you hide her coat of feathers, she will leave without it.

Wait, you say, but I thought . . . Oh, those old stories?

You didn't believe those, did you?



She knows where to get another, and anyway

she doesn't need wings to fly.



6.       How to mourn a swan girl.



Make a shrine, perhaps on a dresser or small table.

Three swan feathers, a candle, a stone smoothed

by ocean waves. That should do it.



Sit on the sofa. Hold one of the feathers. Cry.

Realize it was inevitable.

Swan girls fly. It's just what they do.

It wasn't you.



7.       How to be a swan girl.



There are no rules the sky is infinite

the world is yours laid out in rivers and mountains

like a great quilt pieced by your grandmother.



She is older than they are.



Her hair is white as snow and covers them

her eyes are bright as stars and when she laughs

avalanches.



You take after her.



Swan girl where will you go?

Everywhere you say and then

everywhere else.



(aaaaand that's 30 poems! Hooray for April, and see you all next year.)