Precise scaffold silhouette
slants sharply across smoothed
cement. Narrow shadow shaft bisects
unfinished window, points
toward glowing sunlit
sliver of grey wall. Mundane
beauty, workday
glory unwitnessed.

Dirt clogged scrubgreen foothills
roll to meet obscured mountains,
veiled in translucent exhaust haze.
Terracotta tile roofs
top flaking white buildings
piled together. Escheresque
march down broken streets.
Traffic clogged arteries pulse
toward tangled city center
disgorging cars,
weary souls.

Disconnected, alienated
uncomprehended, bended
sounds fill
push eardrums, runs,
aural chaos, linguistic pathos
confusion, fusion, apprehension
verbal exhaustion rules
grooves,
governs this immigrant’s life. Five years of coping
scoping, hoping, scraping, trying
to get ahead, get with it, get it on,
fit in. Find that
niche, riche, find that place,
misplaced, fast
pace, foundering, mapless,
GPSless, guideless,
uncomprehended, bended,
alienated, disconnected.

My family sleeps, well
almost. Abdellah’s awake, sniffling
in the room he shares with
his brother. I make coffee
silently in the kitchen,
now my own thief,
cleaning coffee ***, turning
on stove stealthily
so as not to let him hear.
It’s not that I don’t want him
I do
but I steal silence, and
covet solitude
more.

Delicate ochre haze
against dark mountains
separates receding
lines of luxuriant trees. These
valley vistas,
these suburbs, look
like an 18th-century set
design: the landscape
stepping back
one row
after the other in
distant views. Funny
how hanging contamination
gently showcases
nature.

Watery morning
sunlight
filters gently through
browning oak
leaves nevertheless
another Algiers
rush
hour grips
convulses
disgorges
one
rattling car
after the
other.

Algiers, six
floors up but
still
the rich
odor of reused
cooking oil, of limp French
fries makes its
way to this
tiled top floor
balcony, an absolute sky
scraper by local standards. The
low whine of traffic
reaches me –
syncopated, punctuated
by a workman’s
hammer, an impatient
horn, the wail of a car
alarm, a quick shout
of greeting, of
anger. I
can almost see that
far away
in the distance
velvet mountains still
bluely rim
the fog-yellowed
sea.