In lieu of flowers.

Ebeid, Carolina

 [In lieu of flowers]
    In lieu of flowers send a map of your city, send a toy
   replica of the authentic thing, in lieu of flowers.
   Dispatch the cardboard jet planes & chrysanthemum
   shaped fireworks spinning out over Beirut. It is 1976
   when I am born & the Hudson River festoons
   itself with tall ships named Barba Negra & Amerigo
   Vespucci. A boys choir reaches glad falsetto heights.
   Where the angels cloister.
   And by angels I mean
   satellites, in their seraphic orbits photographing
   us. In lieu of feelings bring your telescopic
   cross-hair vision. This is a picture of a cyclone
   forming, it looks like your father in his youth.
   In lieu of girls named Jennifer born in the seventies,
   burn the skinny cut-out dolls. You don't have to choose
   anymore between the two Berlins, as you do between
   the two Jerusalems.
   YOU ARE HERE
   standing on a sidewalk under telephone
   wires. There are voices within them. Listen,
   the hoi polloi chitchat quickened over your head
   with grocery lists & grievances & pigeon shit.
   If only these were metaphysical, we'd make
   a killing. In lieu of money bring
   the spirit level
   in the syringe. A streak of green bottles refracting
   light. Bring a line from a sacred hymn. Like a line
   between states, between waking & undulating
   sleep, drawn then redrawn as the line between
   the shore & the paper boats. In lieu of waves,
   bring little rumors, little winds.