You no longer feel anything for the movies.
It’s a death star you live on, splotch of desert spared
in mind trick. They’d made you small in that Great House of—
as if outlier. Your Highness. Like shoe itch, like rusty gumball. Cry
Uncle Solo. Cooler than Schlomo. Hyperdrive of shame & thrill. Only,
there is no try, & only you had such right to call across Shabbos
table: Great Solo! He’d turn all their homes upside-down
when you came to visit, & of all the great
grandchildren, he chose
you,
a girl,
who mostly lived outside
their close-knit galaxy, somewhere
else, far, far away. A girl with a mother
whose name he would not say. You rasped it to him
anyway. Esperanza. Esperanza. Midnight falafel & mixed
grill. Just you. & your Solo. Not quite a rebel
alliance. Stop-start gridlock over the bridge, eyes
like light
-sabers battling x-wings off the 3. Cusp
of Giuliani years. Sweeping though lower
Manhattan, its early morning avenues always
alleyways. Fingers entwining a force within
you. Both talking at once. Both hands cold. He chose
the rabbi who’d converted her, who’d tried
to change her name. Ester.
Ester. Eight years later, you
were born & still they rose
one big stone tide. Waiting for you
to fall to the dark side. Tent city in Tompkins.
Alphabet City. Even Shopsin’s where Kenny okayed
Solo could simply sit as you devoured pancakes of
macaroni & cheese. Not kosher, rebbe, he’d laugh
& throw out yuppies for looking too long
at the menu. If you have to ask. If,
perhaps. You never did. There is
no try. But waiting. &
waiting
for the song of your Jedi
name, for I
know
from your own Solo. Your own
Solo pinching your cheeks & refusing
even a nibble & you
grew, believing this
was the only love
you’d never need
to test,
even when you, like
your father, married too
out of faith, & married without asking
if it meant a strike against, a strike
again. You believed even when
it broke
Mata
-rose. Spat once. Stormtrooping heart
woke, how I loved you
despite your father’s mistake—
& you believed still,
a millennium it seemed, like rogue
falcon who leaves
as soon as she can reach light
speed, a light
for which he reached
on his deathbed & cried
with my own eyes & never did
find.
It didn’t matter he left you
his most precious
things, you let them
bury all that matter,
all that grief
in which you stood on your hands
& bloodrushed & bent to upend
this universe where anti-
matter can no longer
exist
on its own,
no use trying for who
really loved whom. Who. How could you imagine
AntiSolo anymore
than he
AntiMatarose?
