Late September 2001 Rorschach Test
in memory of Farhad
The daily morning paper dares,
who do you see here? Newsprint’s
blotches of black and grey form a face
no more terrorist than the turbaned man
who enters this E train at 3rd and Lex,
such assumptions another cause for terror
for the Sikh man who decorated his taxi
like it’s the 4th of July to ward off the ignorance
from skin white like mine. I asked him to deliver us
to Queens Memorial, please. I cradled Philip, fevered
with sickled cells. He’ll recover in a bed next to Farhad,
who’d learn he is dying of cancer, who’d feed us, two weeks later,
when we’d visit, dried white mulberries from Iran and bid us
to take care of each other. I rode home on the E train that once
ended at the World Trade Center through tunnels
linking English to Spanish, Hindi to Yiddish
like the cupped palms of girls make telephones
that carry misconceived messages around a slumber party.
Like Priya’s terror broke through my phone that night:
. . A man shouted, ‘I’ll burn you Arab girl.’
Tamil, not Arab, she was walking home
on Avenue A, in New York winter
when it is never truly day or night
and everyone’s skin fades to a washed out
version of the self. In the morning, these faces unite
in their need for coffee as they create a line
of silhouettes, a fresh Rorschach test.
The bagel cart owner knows what each prefers:
black or sweet and light. Saeed saved me
the last poppy seed muffin that morning,
like many mornings, my arrival always near his workday’s end —
he’ll start a round of golf on Long Island while I start
a day of editing and dubbing in windowless rooms.
As he prepped my coffee – scooped the sugar,
flipped the spigot in one move – I searched for
my wallet, missing. “I think I left it …” He handed me
the brown paper bag with my breakfast
and some cash, “here, something to buy lunch.”
Lisa Eve Cheby, a librarian, poet, and daughter of immigrants, holds an MFA from Antioch University and an MLIS from SJSU. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in various journals and anthologies. Her chapbook, Love Lessons from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is available from Dancing Girl Press. http://lisacheby.wordpress.com