Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

Yahya Frederickson
Strolling in Béja, the Eve of Al-Maulid
for Nabil
Béja, Tunisia
People are buying up raisins and salted seeds.
Your father sits at a café table
behind the market, the end of the alley
with a cigarette, a cup of crême,
and a newspaper creased into quarters.
At the government mercantile,
I buy my mother a ceramic hand
decorated with henna flowers.
When I bring it home in a year,
rings that no longer fit her atrophied hand
will slip onto its fingers, dormant watches
will rest for eternity across its palm.
We walk on, to the sweet shop
lined with mirrors. On every plate,
a cube of cake soaked with orange-blossom syrup.
Slice it carefully, for if you look
in any direction, you’ll find eyes,
everywhere possibility. Our quandary, mon ami,
is that life is a birdcage of glances.
If we escape, we escape on clipped wings
that carom us back to the gate bougainvillea
cascades over, a house of cool tile.
Your mother gave you her whiteness.
When I leave the guest room
64 ◆ Crab Orchard Review