Dreaming Ashura

By Leila Montour

One night the sightless city cars
zoom past the window
while within my walls
the songs of tribute chant
their rhythms, like a marching army.

Here: the American metropolis.
The sickle moon sighs in the sky
to the silent stars that flicker
faintly on the first of Muharram.

There will be no sheikh here
reciting the story. No hair swinging
women in my living room. No
breasts beaten to a robin’s red.

This year,
I dream Ashura.

I drive through downtown,
where the bloodshot homeless stand
with torn cardboard plaques.
They melt to black clad mourners
bearing calligraphic banners. I turn,
and one grizzled man
tattered in fatigues
spies me, drills in my eyes.

His cracked hand rises
and strikes his breast.