My old great-aunt Elaine with her withered hands gave me $200 and beaded handbag
"This your mad money," she told me, as we sat on that nursing home couch, "And it ain't for your purse. This goes in your shirt, where only you know you got it."
The assisted-living nurse chuckled to herself. They got along, my great-aunt and her.
"Why?"
"Cuz if you get angry," she said, in that Marlboro-raspy voice of hers, "And you gotta go, you walk out on your date and you leave 'is ***. And then you got your money for a strong drink. And your cab."
The nurse laughed
My aunt re-situated herself on the nursing home couch. Elaine Dauterive. Her mind was going, and so was her health, but she was as regal as a queen on her throne in that moment
her fire-red hair, ungrayed, was her crown
No cape as royal as that sleeping gown.
"Don't you think for once second I can't take care of you, honey," she said in that creole drawl, and I knew what she meant
Because even after she'd gone I would have that mad money
All stuffed in my bra for when I needed it
Because she was older than time, for me, seeing things like
The Great Depression, World War II
What I read in history books
I'd be ****** if I took what she said with even one grain of salt because Auntie-Lane, I'll be ****** if I don't love you
And I know you're on your way out and
I'll buy you whiskey in the afterlife with some of that $200 cash that you busted your *** scrounging up for me
Southern hospitality at its finest
And those liver spots redder than wine adorn you like badges of honor for all of the years you've endured
My elder - creole woman, with a soul as fire-red as her hair, breathing more smoke than air
My old dragon
On a pile of gold: her mad money

I adjust my scarf, pull my fringe out
lift my skirt above my knees
and hide my old HTC

I pretend I don't know, don't give the answer
Cower behind the mainstream facade
Try to hide that I'm a ******

An electric current; the slightest surge
quaking, pulsing through your veins.
Your pores rising, stubble standing;
goosebumps have caught you again.

They say that human eyes
can hold galaxies,
constellations.
Maybe that explains why
every time I look into yours,
I feel infinite.
Like there’s no star
I couldn’t reach.

It's the sixth of Muharram
and we just cried about
Qasim
The little hall is getting fuller,
but my inhaler's there to rescue
when it wasn't there to save
Sakina
from the flames at Sham-e-Ghariba
Or help to heal As-Sajjad
and make him a bit stronger.

The tension's rising, because I
have never been, and Iraq is
in so much undeserved trouble
And the mosque's gotta close
by twelve or the authorities'll
get to ya.
And we don't want that to happen.

The saf is rushed, and words pronounced wrong
seven year old's are joining the adult one
even though they know they're too short
because no one's taught 'em how to do it

It's gham time and the Maulana's
rushing it, quickening the masaib
so as not to go overtime

Sitting and observing
and trying to see it as an
outsider
It's all so beautiful
the tears for goodness and the
community spirit
We're not terrorists trying to
take over the world
We're Hussainis, try'na
help it