Love Song in the Wrong Frequency

 

Twelve years a whale has sung his singular melody
seeking a mate with his solitary wail.

Twelve years he has persisted in an absurd serenade
to only echoes of his song as company.

Scientists at Woods Hole and elsewhere have recorded
his unique sound puzzling over the whale's persistence.

They've declared him deformed, misshapen, mis-wired,
at the very least an eccentric giant of the deep.

Deaf people have claimed him as one of their own.
Meanwhile this bachelor ignored by his peers

continues his off-key song hoping to attract
a mate with a keen sense of esthetic,

a sophisticate who will appreciate an original wail
even sent in the wrong frequency.

 

 

Oriental Bath

 

Half-hidden behind a scrim of moist vapors
fluid silhouettes moving in shadow motion
greeted us as we entered with a blast of cold air
the main hall a basin on each wall.

An unlikely Venus, she stood apart soaping her back
hair a wet rope covering a breast, at her feet
a brass cup, her body naturally aged,
no cosmetic surgery having kept it alert.

Childbirth had left a faintly visible map of scars
bluish on a biscuit-colored belly--a fragile manuscript
taken out on rare occasions, one imagines
to be read by attentive eyes.

The rest is a jumble of sensations. The smell of green oranges,
a cool, dark dressing room, divans high along the walls. The
scent of laurel soap guiding us deeper into the communal bath,
my grandmother pushing me into a private room

where a masseuse would scrub my back raw, comb my hair
with oil, wrap me in a warmed towel and send me
back to the dank dressing room when gossip from the main hall
becomes too daring for a child's ears.

Exiled in a cocoon of towels, eating almonds and oranges,
examining wrinkled toes peaking out from hiding, I
wonder what all that laughter escaping from the communal bath
is all about--the communal bath full of life where women

from a different time and place free of husbands and chores
are bathing and gossiping, washing clean the week
while wiling away an otherwise useless Saturday afternoon.
I still hear their voices and ponder if I got

what I was supposed to get from this experience
when my grandmother who normally didn't tend to us
insisted over my mother's objections to take me
at least once to an oriental bath?

—Sylva Boyadjian-Haddad

 

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