The Master’s House
To wave from the porch
To let go of the grudge
To disrobe
To recall Ethel Rosenberg’s green polka-dotted dress
To call your father and say I’d forgotten how nice everyone in these red states can be
To hear him say Yes, long as you don’t move in next door
To recall every drawn curtain in the apartments you have lived
To find yourself at 33 at a vast expanse with nary a papyrus of guidance, with nary a voice, a muse, a model
To finally admit out loud then I want to go home
To have a dinner party of intellectuals with a bell, long-armed, lightly-tongued, at each setting
To sport your dun gown
To revel in face serums
To be a well-calibrated burn victim to fight the signs of aging
To assure financial health
To be lavender sachets and cedar lining and all the ways the rich might hide their rot
To eye the master’s bone china
To pour diuretic in his coffee and think this erosive to the state
To disrobe when the agent asks you to
To find a spot on any wall to stare into
To develop the ability to leave an entire nation thusly, just by staring at a spot on the wall, as the lead-vested agent names article by article what to remove
To do this in order to do the other thing, the wild thing
To say this is my filmdom, The Master’s House, and I gaze upon it and it is good
To discuss desalinization plants and de terroir
To date briefly a banker, a lapsed Marxist, and hear him on the phone speaking in billions of dollars, its residue over the clear bulbs of his eyes, as he turns to look upon your nudity
To fantasize publishing a poem in the New Yorker eviscerating his little need
To set a bell at each intellectual’s table setting ringing idea after idea, and be the simple-footed help, rushing to say Yes?
To disrobe when the agent asks you to
To find a spot on any wall to stare into
To develop the ability to leave an entire nation thusly, just by staring at a spot on the wall
To say this is my filmdom, The Master’s House
To recall the Settler who from behind his mobile phone said I’m filming you for God
To recall this sad God, God of the mobile phone camera, God of the small black globe and pixelated eye above the blackjack table at Harrah’s and the metal, toothed pit of Qalandia checkpoint the same
To recall the Texan that held the shotgun to your father’s chest, sending him falling backward, pleading, and the words came to him in Farsi
To be jealous of this, his most desperate language
To lament the fact of your lamentations in English, English being your first defeat
To finally admit out loud then I want to go home
To stand outside your grandmother’s house
To know, for example, that in Farsi the present perfect is called the relational past, and is used at times to describe a historic event whose effect is still relevant today, transcending the past
To say, for example, Shah dictator bude-ast translates to The Shah was a dictator, but more literally to The Shah is was a dictator
To have a tense of is-was, the residue of it over the clear bulb of your eyes
To walk cemetery after cemetery in these States and nary a gravestone reading Solmaz
To know no nation will be home until one does
To do this in order to do the other thing, the wild thing, though you’ve forgotten what it was
