Notes on a Performance by Azerbaijani Mu

Let’s call this
the ungrateful American
college student doesn’t
know how to listen to music.
Let’s call this
we all know what it is to
have a heartbeat
and we are blushing
in our fingertips, pink.
Let’s call this
place a temple
and the case that
lies on the floor
a coffin,
holder of dead things.
We bring them to life with a
twitch of the fingers.

Love is a fire that
sears prayers in my palms
and the bird flies away
unscathed.

Lets call them
weavers
because they are given strings,
not stories.
Let’s call this
a window
not yet broken,
weeping shards of glass.
Let’s call the morning
celebration of morning.
And the glass cuts
lines in my cheeks,
like tears
flushed and spent.
They shine as coins do.
To be rich is in the breath.

My tongue is a vessel
that I keep for my own -
jealous lover
guarding secrets,
let them pass
through your teeth like
so many grains of sand.

Let’s call this
we know how to
break the words that
bind us
in a single flick
of the fingers.
And let’s call this
poem the lips that part
and meet again.