The Distancing Effect

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

The Distancing Effect

by Maryam Monalisa Gharavi
Copyright 2016
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover art and design by Daniel Horowitz
Drawing of the Day 334
from the series 365
www.daniel-horowitz.com
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-231-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015951641
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

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Ipanema
After Catarina Paraguau (d. 1586)

All birth begins with names The owner of one name

conducts electricity with the owner of another name A
new name is born like stentorian stanza Bred from the
borrowed tongue of its speakers
You bear the name dangerous waters for what the
Tupinamb called their coast before Dom Joo fled
Bonaparte and issued lexicon by royal decree
A tiny wave born under the suns aegis Struggling in these
depths The two of you You and your name
I remember my uncle painting blue and yellow geometries
on the kashi (If I am not a Muslim then why does a
Muslim face stare back at me from the turquoise sheen of
these tiles?)
Je ne suis pas musulmane (Turquoise, noun, from feminine
turqueise, brought to western Europe through Turkey)
You are the isthmus of Prospero (Gentle breath of yours my
sails Must fill, or else my project fails) The isthmus of
Ians for whom the women in white bathe church steps
The isthmus of Gaza whose gate lies as an awning above
your head and a grave beneath your feet
Words alone are born in silence So swim small face
Though frightened by the bones of castaways wrapped in
black cloaks washing up aside you Swim untainted in
sullied waters

13

I remember my aunt and her tea leaves composing my fate

The leaves bore salt That was her verdict then But salt
does not come from the mines of the eyes alone
See how common and expected and ordinary the nerves
and tremors of these waters How to overlook the alchemy
of turqueise? How to deny ones alchemy?

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Flash
For Jaime A. Salazar

White morning, full of praise.

Before every thing wakes from sleep
I wake first, thinking some
Whatever thing.
Clumsily I pull back the blinds:
Blare of wondrous light!
Anticipatory sky!
Its all there in cashmere,
Milky Way,
Eastman Kodak white,
Enveloping the brushes and stop signs.
This blanket covers them all. Even my
Interior lake is frosted in the blast of its
Whiteness. In the accumulation of life,
In things and places outside the window,
In our little igloo,
Chaos makes a metamorphosis into quietude.
No miraculous sounds: geese, car mufflers, couples
walking:
None are heard.
And I stop breathing so that nothing
Sound while youre asleep, so that
No thing dare break
The oceanic mystery of the antemeridian.

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Against Nepenthe
For Waly Salomo
The landlady brought news
of your death
just as I was on the ledgers
of a great discovery,
on the edge of the New Worlds
oldest treasures.
We would have been neighbors.
Me: um pequeno ponto no mundo
In the world without a world.
You: the reluctant shepherd
of false starts and lost stars.
You: to grasp the reins of chromium horses
through intergalactic charterbelts,
To map the course of factory smoke
in blue ink nephograms.
Me: to undead the living,
To grasp with the minds eye
that last image of you in the doorway.

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Sonogram of an Apartment Building

Carioca apartment, Japanese walls, the neighbors
intoxicated hands jangling a key into a hole, a mothers
bellow (abre a boca!), a drill or a gimlet, a kettle at
boiling point, the hysteric clamor of football highlights
and car accidents, the yelping noise of sexual exchange,
the repetitious synth-pop of North American chart music,
the monotonous response of porn videos (isso! isso!), the
aspirated bursts of air puffing out of a game show host,
flatus, the shrill honk of a forced laugh, a mothers yowl
(cala a boca!), the flat hum of a television monitor turned
on, whispers into a pillow, the elevators petered grunting,
a childs shriek to its mother (nooooo!), the rude bray of
California English, sing-song radio Portuguese, a woman
vocalizing orgasm (isso!'), slapped flesh, sighs, filho-dame expletives spewed into a landline telephone, the taut
violin strings of a detective movie soundtrack, voices
elongated in the entertainment of company, the maudlin
overture of a cheaply dubbed foreign movie, high-pitched
titters of laughter at a baritone males lampoon, ceaseless
labor of row and reverb, a circus cacophony, a marching
band battalion engineering
sonic nightfall
ad perpetuum.

17

Exercise Video
I turn the volume very low
and semi-close the door.
Then I disrobe.
I limber leg, chin, arm, and chest
and loosen up a thigh.
A blonde woman sighs.
Soft-soaped sweat and polymer:
I keep lively company.
She smiles at me.
If the door should open now
to a nylon TV glow
Ill burn, I know.
We sweat alone in this room:
The smarmy Valley industry and
My false privacy.

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Bus 434
Heads bowed, as though in prayer
Bodies slumped on the buoy of the neck
A church set loose upon the waves
Sunk in the foggy habit
Of each singular mind, removed
From the plausible dangers
Of a gasoline ship at sea.
When the lever signals a stop
The undertow pulls them to concrete again
A passenger holding a folded apron
Inches by the nautical congregation
(who watch from hand-smeared windows)
Inside the shadow of a gated
condo
minimum

TURN OFF
YOUR HEADLIGHTS
AND IDENTIFY
YOURSELF HERE

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English Lesson
The first day of schooling
A long corridor of no significance.
Where is your accent?
Lost to me was the meaning of the word
But I knew that whatever an accent was
It must have been choked out of me
In my sleep or under the dentists drill.
I must have been robbed out of it
On the bus or on the walk to class
It must be here under the desk
If we join hands we can look for it.
Where is your accent?
The first day of schooling
An unaccented girl of no significance.

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Shoplifting
Girls, glued.
Interlacing palms, wrists,
Elbows massaged with odorless
Vaseline, inhaling
The stores plastic novelty.
Minisaias and Havaianas
In these Lojas Americanas, costume
Jewelry stamped MADE IN CHINA
Silverized with nickel.
If such a glint
Does not capture you
You know nothing of adolescence.
Here she comes: fury
In slow-motion, frosted eye
Shadow, her waist a ship
Heaving extra decks,
Face bulged and feet clomping.
They didnt look at each other or even her,
Now twisting their arms behind the small of their backs,
Spitting into their ears with a hard finality:
Leave before I call the cops and
Donchu dare come back.

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The Girl Who Flew Over Niteri

For Leandro Couto de Almeida

It was the season

of low-flying birds.
Warblers, yellow-billed
cuckoos, veeries, and
red-eyed vireos.
It was the season of
jurujuba herons and
migrant sanderlings.
She fixed her eye on a
spaceship on a cliff,
Museum of Contemporary
Art. She didnt notice
the family of four on
Boa Viagem beach staring
up. Same architect as Brasilia,
the father explained.
Nor did she notice or
mind the grunts of the
fat-cheeked neighbors boy
chasing his sister, scissors
aimed at her white bra strap.
A storm hurtled toward the
condominium, collaborating
with an unseen demon-hand.

22

For a few seconds the family

at Boa Viagem beach doubted
what they saw. Out of the skys
ruddy corner a heavy falling
rounded down to earth.
It was the season
of low-flying birds.
The warblers watched.

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