© Susan L. Helwig

Magic Carpet, Grounded

The salesman in the store talks
stains stains stains
no problem
and mentions women who toil shoulder to shoulder
with men (who couldn't support that?)
and don't forget
even blood and egg yolk

My new carpet is a girl
Boubalina I call her
Zorba's sweet honorific
for a dame bound to be walked on

Now she's unrolled and on the dining room floor

The family cat smells a sheep or two
a possible friend
does back flips, kisses her this way and that
whispers "How are ewe?"

I get Farsi for Beginners
in hopes a word or two will soften her exile
from the Ten Thousand Villages she once called home
take to humming a few bars of "Eight Miles High"
to conjure up those heady days, now cloaked in legend
when all her kinsfolk could fly