Quantum Entanglement

Some collisions
across space-time--
no matter how brief
or well defined--

imprint on the one
the other's reverse,
maintaining contact
through mysterious bonds.

Like the reach
of his eyes
through her sleep
deep at night

stirring the water
of her dreams,
changing the chemistry
of what he can see.

There is no leaving
what will not be lost.

The stage may go dark,
and the music fall shy,
but once entangled,
the dance is such

that if one goes left,
the other,  
light years away, 
tilts right.

Einstein called
this phenomenon
"spooky action
at a distance."

I call this
love.

For Chris

I could have let you
fade away

It would have been
easy to do

I never held your hand,
after all

Never heard your laugh
in my ears

Didn't even know, for starters,
if your eyes were brown or blue

But no.

Something on this screen
made me look up your name

which seems right

because for me
and for us

This
is where you lived.

And now that I know
--now that I've seen what
I should've known before--

that your life could not
be contained by

a world of make-believe,
emoticons and avatars

or by two sons you loved 
so fiercely

Now that I know
where you went

and how you chose
to arrive

Now that I feel
how blue
blue really is

I wish to God I could
rewrite an ending
that had firmly taken
hold of your hand

--

For my friend, Christine Eldin, who was the light and the glue and as fine a person as she was a writer. I'll meet you on The Strand.

Bitten

("The Lovers," by Rene Magritte)

Through the jaws of time,
he tossed her a line

anchored around
a carnivorous tooth

The cave closed in
(with her)him

and stranded, she scrawls
her Babel of runes

on the weeping walls
of a darkness so starved

it chews on its tongue
for relief

Jennifer Zobair's Most Embarrassing Moment in Publishing

This is a guest post by Jennifer Zobair, author of Painted Hands. Leave a comment (bonus points if you include your most embarrassing moment!) for a chance to win a signed copy of her book, a $25 Amazon gift card and, if you're a writer, the option of having a query letter critiqued by Jennifer.

Wouldn't it be nice if I didn't have one?

The most embarrassing moment in my publication process came while I was querying. There was an agent I really thought I wanted to work with, mostly because of her prominent online profile. I sort of built her up in my mind, and when she asked to read my full manuscript, I was ecstatic. About a month later, I got an email from her saying incredible, detailed things about my novel, but then she said she was afraid she might not be able to sell it “in this market.” After considering it, she said she was afraid she’d have to pass.

I was devastated. It was one of those “maybe I should give up” moments: If someone who loved my work this much wouldn’t represent me, who would?  I said as much to my aunt when I forwarded the rejection to her. Except? Instead of hitting “forward,” I hit “reply.”

I’d sent my despairing, feeling-sorry-for-myself email right back to the rejecting agent.

Fortunately, I hadn’t said anything bad about her in the email. I apologized immediately, and she was truly lovely in her response. But still.

It took some time for me to get over the rejection (and the mortification). But here’s the making lemons into lemonade part: I chose to believe the good things she’d said about my manuscript. I decided to query agents who were actively seeking and selling multicultural fiction, stories like the one I’d written. A couple of months later, I signed with Kent Wolf, who sold my novel to St. Martin’s Press.

So this is what I would say to writers: First, don’t give up. If you believe in your work, do not give up in the face of rejection, even when it feels crushing. Second, if you’re querying, it’s really important to find the right agent, the one who both loves your work and has a kick-ass attitude about selling it. That’s the agent you want. And finally, a little attention to detail when forwarding an email can be a very good thing.

------

Sarah here. 

What Jennifer didn't say--and what I know firsthand--is that all her embarrassing moments put together would be dwarfed by the quiet constancy of her kindness and good faith, not only as an author, but as a mother, wife and friend. 

When Jennifer started visiting this blog 5 years ago, all I knew was that she routinely left the most perceptive comments I'd ever received. It was worth posting a piece just to learn what Jennifer would say. When I visited her blog in turn, and read her writings on feminism, especially in relation to Muslim women, I was deeply impressed by her passion, fight and obvious intelligence. 

Then I read her first piece of fiction. Which rocked me with its exquisite imagery and emotional swell. I told Jennifer she reminded me of Jhumpa Lahiri. 

Jhumpa Lahiri, people.   

I was fortunate enough to be an early reader of Jennifer's manuscript, Painted Hands, before she started querying agents. Jennifer was kind enough to mention me in the "Acknowledgments" section of that novel, where she thanks me for being "thoughtful and sure."     

And I was sure. Miraculously sure, for someone so otherwise adrift in uncertainty. 

Sure that this brilliant book would one day sit on my shelf, where it will soon be placed, if I can just stop picking it up to grin at its gorgeous cover with my gorgeous friend's name on it. 

Sure of how proud I am to call Jennifer a friend. 

Sure that the moment we stumbled across one another was one of the luckiest I've known, and that the quality of that good fortune has very little to do with publishing or writing at all.  

Remember: leave a comment to win the items mentioned above! I'll draw a name at the end of a week. 

Visit Jennifer Zobair and be sure to read her wonderful essay in The Rumpus

Read my review of Painted Hands 

Telling Stories' 25 Questions with Jennifer Zobair 

Jennifer's Favorite Reads at Drey's Library

Buy Painted Hands: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indie Bound

Anniversary

Twelve years in,
and forever to follow

I can hear your laugh
and every time--
every time--

it makes me smile. 

And how it is 
that my breath will catch
when you steal up softly
to encircle my hips

where I lean on the past 
and watch our future
crest and crest 

and never break.  

Deleted (B&L)

A Review: Painted Hands by Jennifer Zobair

In this groundbreaking debut novel, Jennifer Zobair expertly weaves together the friendships, careers, and romantic relationships of three Muslim women, illuminating the points of intersection with nuance, empathy, and a writing voice that shines. Painted Hands is a book for people who love richly drawn characters and tight, riveting storytelling.

As the novel's heart and soul, Amra has worked years of grueling hours toward achieving her goal of making partner at a prestigious Boston law firm, only to fall hard for Mateen, a childhood acquaintance who may have more traditional expectations for the woman he marries than Amra wants to acknowledge.

Amra’s best friend Zainab is a gorgeous, suffer-no-fools politico spearheading a Massachusetts Senate campaign, whose Islamic faith becomes a convenient target for Chase, the up-and-coming, conservative radio host whose lifelong ambition is checked by his growing attraction to the strangely familiar, and magnetic, Zainab. 

Amra’s law firm colleague, Hayden, has become an unlikely convert to Islam after years of being marginalized by men. While her new religion is a salve to her loneliness, Hayden has drifted into a more fundamentalist sect of Islam led by Fareeda, a woman who abhors Muslim feminists like Zainab and is all too eager to shape Hayden’s interpretation of what a “true” Muslim woman should be.

Throughout the novel, Ms. Zobair highlights the Pakistani and Indian practice of women dyeing their hands with henna before the wedding of a family member or friend. Amra and Zainab have maintained a lifelong tradition of embedding their dearest, most secret wish somewhere inside this intricate pattern of loops and swirls.

And that’s how reading this book felt: like a beautiful secret unfurling across the pages, drawing me nearer to these smart, vulnerable, and very human characters in a story as original as the women it paints, and as universal as the heart’s desires.

With Painted Hands, Ms. Zobair has lit one more light for hope and understanding in this fractured world. I highly recommend it.   

---

Visit Jennifer Zobair

Buy Painted Hands: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Indie Bound

Hearth & Home

I dreamed of a boy
in a fireplace.

Curled inside
its cold recess,

he slept the sleep
of the innocent

while I stood outside,
powerless.

But the flames
wouldn't spark

and the boy slept on,
fetus-like.

Perhaps he dreamed
of a birthday cake

or of a woman watching
the darkness at play.

Perhaps he was the smoke
poured from my addled brain.


For there are times it 
seems too sick a fate

to be a parent on
this cold, dark stage.

Where every lick
of what if
dances nearer upon
this matchstick life.

Ascension

Did his failures follow him
into the ground

and, given lead,
did they lime him down?  

Or did the bitterness rise to
where he last dragged his eyes?

Like a blue balloon.

Like some endless, white flag. 

Dearest

He died on a Tuesday, but it was Friday before she got the email.

Subject: Sad News

She dwelled on the other names in the dean's send list: 

Jacob Hershel. 

Emma Wallace. 

Owen Mather. 

Her brain kicked at them, but they had the spongy resiliency of youth. Her eyes slid past the rest, falling off the screen into her lap.

Thirty-six years. 

It had been thirty-six years since her stint as Max’s research assistant. It shouldn’t surprise her that he was dead. She was old enough now. 

--passed away after an extended illness--

Yet it wouldn't stick.

She made herself available to the information, and it just wouldn't stick.

The problem was that she hadn’t experienced the world as anything less over the last three days. This seemed a proof enough. Surely she would have felt something had Max been dead. She would have sensed it, if only in hindsight. 

She wouldn’t have gotten her hair done in a universe bereft of Max Jamison. 

She wouldn’t be folding her hands like that. 

--survived by his beloved wife, Jean, and their two children, Rebecca and Joshua. A service will be held--

A scholarship will be endowed--

His legacy lives on in the many--

She stood and went to her bedroom. 

In a shoebox beneath her bed, she kept the few things he’d given her. There was the time he’d insisted on adding her name to a journal article he’d authored: Ignobling the Noble Gases. Months later, he’d cooked up a pink crystal in the shape of a snowflake, before presenting it to her in a petri dish in the lab. To deflect her euphoria, she had teased him about its potential toxicity. For an instant, he had looked hurt and she had felt so very sorry. 

Setting the things aside, she reached for the letter.  

Dearest--

She let the paper drop to the floor and brought the envelope to her mouth. Closing her eyes, she brushed the flap of the broken seal across her lips.

Nothing. 

So she did it again. 

And again. 

And again. 

And again.