Sharia Law
1.
In Iran a sixteen-year-old rape victim is in court for
Crimes against Chastity. She sees that the judge is against her and that Sharia
Law is unyielding. She takes off her shoes and flings them at the robed man.
She remembers her contempt with satisfaction in the
moment before she is hung. Like a bride, she gives herself over to contempt.
2.
I escape to Mexico. There is no Sharia law there. If I
drink enough mescal, I can forget the stupidity of Americans. When I am blind
drunk, I see everything clearly. My eyes are bloodshot red. The jaguar’s eyes
burn red. His mouth is red and glows from within. I come and go. The world is
full of phantasmas. Americans pour agua purificado from jug to jug, as if their
rituals of juggling clean water will void damnation.
3.
The Mayan ruins sit heavily in the dark, as do the
gowned Mayan women in the red brocade seats, like cups of chocolate candy in
foil wrappings.
4.
The jaguar’s teeth are sharp as a shark’s, sharp as a
moray eel’s. This peninsula was once a sea. The jaguar’s whiskers are bristly
as my uncle’s, who owned and ran a clothing store in Queens. His face cut me
when he bent to kiss. I’d already learned that vampires came from Rumania, and
here he was, with his flat cap and red eyes. Ruler of the ghetto, he cheated
black men, who were afraid to buy their work clothes from someone else.
5.
The guitar maker is like me. He withdraws from
the babbling world. The Scottish call it “havering.” “Loathsome” is the word
that best describes human society. People make his skin crawl. In his workshop
are guitars in various stages of completion, redwood, rosewood, maple bodies
and necks.
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois