The sun won’t go down

It’s late and hot

and Parisians don’t seem to believe

in conditioned air.

Women go around with makeshift

paper fans, fanning their exposed throats

<<c’est chaud>>

            so hot.

           

Parisians don’t believe in window screens

Tonight, like last night:

a fly (une mouche)

A mosquito (un moustique)

un papillon noir all came inside

            (and a bird on my balcony

             balanced like birds do)

here bird: mouche, un moustique

but leave me the black butterfly.

 

My American clothes are too

            conspicuous

And my well-oiled hair

I dodge speaking and avoid scooters

I try not smiling when that is all

I’ve ever known

            all that was ever expected of me.

 

A green bug lands on my brown leg

I think in English

            (insect vert)

I let it crawl the width of my thigh

            (jambe brune)

I transpose:

 

[           immigrant       immigration

            migrant           migration

            refugee

                        alien or expatriate       ]

Music notes for one voice

            to another.

 

What is diaspora to this bug?

What do you call songs in unsingable keys?

 

Is home the same thing here?

I shoo the bug away

thinking how easily I place that word

on other places. Try to remember

where you come from. Try to know

where you’re going.

 

II

 

Before I reached Paris,

Three bites on the thick part of my thigh—

Two of which bunched together—

They heal, then three more

on my ankle.

 

There was much slapping and even a causality,

But who knows if it’s the mosquito

who has my blood? Who knows

where she travels with ready proboscis

and whether her blood-filled belly’s

content with me?

 

And what have their grazing left behind?

An itch rife with many diseases.

 

It’s silly, I know, still I imagine

my blood mingling with so many others

a confused Parisian mosquito

nattering her way around

with a heavy diasporic blood

complicated by a love of country

that does not love her back.