AFTER SEEING A PICTURE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES OF AN IRAQI WOMAN SITTING AT HER KITCHEN TABLE IN HOUSTON WHILE HER HUSBAND WAS BEING DETAINED AT JFK
Behind her, a potted ivy climbs the yellow wall.
Ivy is not the plant
but its loneliness.
Wife is not the woman
but her cup.
The house feels empty as dumb
hunger without him in it.
The engine of a plane overhead
is the same sound
her stomach makes.
The shadows lay themselves
down the table and soon
darkness takes the room.
The neighbors flick on lights
and pull the shades.
No shame in nature
save what’s in man.
Her hands touch
each other.
The world turns like an ache
in the belly of the sky.
—from Rattle #60, Summer 2018
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John Lazear Okrent: “I am a poet and a family doctor in Tacoma, Washington. I wrote this poem during the brutal and clumsy roll-out of one of the first iterations of the ‘Travel Ban.’ The poem came from an ache, which is where a lot of poems come from, I think.” (web)
