When They Cut the Power, and: ! for the Empty House

Abstract

When They Cut the Power, and: ! for the Empty House Philipe AbiYouness (bio) When They Cut the Power When they cut the power,we sliced the cantaloupe in the dark.Staved off the rot with the thing still sweet.When they cut the power, we called overthe aunts and uncles and cousins,second cousins, great-aunts, great-great grandparents,ancestors caught a last-minute flightto Newark airport. My dad picked them up and the ghost car sang ya lel, ya lel,all the way down fast food alley. Ancestors fabulous, dressed in the sunpeeking through cedar hands,washed in good smoke.Loud as ever, ancestors nagged away the dustwhile night drained the apartment's buzz. They let the switch fall. We let the light out.Rang pots like bells singing war is over,years after the ceasefire. We boiled flowers on the night's stove,lent sugar to the stillness,forgot the drum beating, beat feet stomping,wrote letters to loves gone and cackledthe tar from out of our lungs.When they cut the power, we cutour tousled locks. If they could snip wires and leave our sight darkwe needed the hair out of our eyesso we could see the stars. [End Page 141] ! for the Empty House I guess the rust settled before we did oryour teta was sick with cancer orit was a war, habibi, and I think we lostmore than neighbors or cousins. I thinkwe lost our—how to say—our view?You know, like, of the—the world. I weepfor the orchard my father planted,root of the feud between my cousins now,lemons to never souryou or your brother's mouth.None of the legal papers mention me oryour aunt Lina who were to find homeby way of husbands. What is hardly minewill never be yours and your childrenwon't even know to imagine the tan housewith blue shutters where the clotheslinesconstellation the balcony andI threw water on the floors likehealing the ground for my feet. Your fatherowned a patch of land somewhere.Maybe you will find it. Maybeyour eyes are better than mine.I worry about you, habibi. Peopledon't care, they will steal anythingyou won't spill your blood for and with your3arabi limp, they will portion the dirtoff your soles and make a fortune.That's what they did to me, but your motheris a smart woman. I made a map ofall my missing pieces, geographyno one could take away, because a mapto the unfamiliar is just a photo of earthpulled far, shrunk enough to keep or lose [End Page 142] or singe to ash. The world abbreviatedto paper, light enough to floatthrough every room of the empty air. Philipe AbiYouness Philipe AbiYouness is a first-generation Lebanese-American poet and educator. His work has been featured in Muzzle Magazine, Fugue, Porter House Review, and elsewhere. He is a Best of the Net nominee and a creative writing MFA candidate at Rutgers University– Newark. note: is an Arabic expression pronounced "ya mama." It is an exclamation of frustration, humor, exhaustion, anything really. 3arabi is the Arabizi translation for the word Arabic. Copyright © 2021 Middlebury College