https://medium.com/emrys-journal-online/emrys-journal-online-issue-1-4-5833c956fed7

Someone has written Sarah on the porch

on the back of this handed over photograph,

for me to work on.

Who the hell is Sarah?

Why is she on the porch?

In this eighties outfit, a tube top!

That’s why my mind goes to Elie Tahari, who everyone thinks is a woman

but is actually an Iranian guy.

He came to New York City, walked the streets

of his adopted home, hot and dirty, beautiful and remote.

There were a thousand like him but maybe none

from an orphanage in Rishon L’Zion, founded by Russian immigrants,

escaping pogrom, in the time before

an even worse thing than pogrom

is coming.

He kicks off to America with less than a hundred damp American dollars,

burning designer holes in his pockets.

Rishon was hot and dirty but not like this dirt! American dirt! Where anyone

can grow a pair, in the rich, uncaring and abundant nutrients of the new world.

He takes in the local sounds: screams of joy of those making it!

In the disco he side eyes side boobs squished into basically a bandanna

and thinks, that’s the pair.

Then the prompt starts making me do this and that,

bossy and directive,

competitive and snippy, similar to the New York Elie saw,

filled first with hope and then blood of his ex-wife. No, not because she

scratched his eyes out — they loved each other — but because he believed love had cured his diabetes

and then had to go into the hospital because love

does not cure diabetes.

Nor can it be prompted.

Nor can you predict when it will fall into your hands.