Our First Coffee in America

Huma Aatifi

Like a freakish parable, an alien butterfly intact in early wings
like a deep winter apace, distanced from a beating heart. Kept his secrets,
and whispered to no one. The natural wind
led us to a place, we were friends and then, not. This tendency
to dream with another, diverged but together like curators
of the same theme. Like creatures at the bottom of the sea,
entangled. Never wanting to swim up for air.
Water thinly veiled in light. I had never envisioned water softening
this way under the clouds. The grayish yellowing silver
overgrows against each other. Like Christ nailed in 1491
inside a painting between wondering and believing. The blue fabric
in the corner wrinkled. Before meeting for the first time,
I thought how important it must be to wear a dress from where we
were both born, not thinking of it as kitsch. It shone as I
walked up, the stairs with my bright red shoes,
not matching anything. In some sense - situations artificial
are made of art too. This life, has given me more than
my imagination could offer. A common starling in the city,
flew in front of me, with its whole presence
past me, to my amazement. As if I was the center of the universe
for this bird washed out with light and hope. The rain was gentle and the honeylocust
tree was shining. All the Afghan women poets in the city love Julie.
Described her gestures as choosing each grape as if it were a ripe word.
2Train arrived in Flatbush, I thought of our first meeting.

Huma Aatifi was born in Kabul. She is a painter and poet living in Flatbush. Aatifi is a Truman Capote Fellow in poetry at Brooklyn College. Her two cassettes, Master of the House, and Stone Rigning Sorrows, were released by Spacecase Records and Ever/Never Records.