Mitosis in the Burial Mounds

In my body rattle the dead
like beads shook-up with longing
in Rachel’s ovaries. 

Oleander, calendula or olive,
Only the living sow memory,
open their eyes each dawn

to scan the fields.
I buried a tooth for every
kindness I recall.

In the days between Yizkor
and Yom haZikaron, some being
of smoke fills my throat.

Is an organ implanted in a
body, a tree’s grafted limb?
What is your heart’s fruition?

Ima from Kafr Qassem,
where exactly are you now,
Neshama sheli?

I think I should ask your 
home-town Sheikh, who wrote, 
organ donation will be halal.

I ask my heart: do you hold 
two souls? We’ve cradled one 
another, not months, but years;

should time condense to tissue,
This, then?  —a culture unfolding,
beating its wings, in another. 

—and we all hold our parents.
Do I contain four souls—
No, her parents—six?

My heart is splitting 
And living. 

This heart—what does it mean to you?
Shireen’s question
like rain pelting earth

When that had done rattling
in my head, I asked my heart
how do you feel?

She burst into streaks of water,
throat of smoke: my kids—
How old are you now?

What have the years been for you?
Who has cared for you?

We used to tell 
the younger ones, stay together 
and take care of each other

But our children begin 
by scanning the fields 
for a few stalks of kindness.