WEBVTT

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--evening, everyone.
مساء الخير in case there

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are Arabic speakers out there.

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Thank you to everyone at
the Poetry Center for being

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just phenomenal hosts.

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This is really a special
place that you've created.

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It's full of heart.

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And it's given me just some
peace in a really turbulent time

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today.

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So thank you for
sharing it with me.

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I'm going to do something
different than I usually do,

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which is, I'm going to start
in my grandmother's garden.

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And then we'll get
to the other things.

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Apricots.

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In Rome last summer,
I learned that there

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are seven varieties of apricots,
that they are distinguished

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not only by their physical
appearance, the freckles

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on their skin, or the percentage
of it that reddens on the vine,

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but also by the month
in which they ripen.

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Damascus, my
grandmother's city, is

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known for the apricots of its
Ghouta Valley, each name ending

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in a lingering ee.

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Baladee, the original
descendant of the ancients

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of China and the
Korean Peninsula,

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or Klaabee, the bitter
armeniaca vulgaris,

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hearty fruit of
the Eastern steppe,

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or Mawardee, with
its flirtatious

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name and promise of perfume.

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That long ee of the
possessive claims the apricot

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for the country, the
animal wilderness,

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for water softened with roses.

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Last summer in Rome, turning
the corner onto Piazza de Santa

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Maria, the clink of the
morning's last cappuccino

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glasses and low growls
of Vespas on the street

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gave no indication of the city
I would travel to a few steps

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forward.

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I wasn't thinking of the
jam-colored sunsets of Amman,

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the stone fruits and
wedding music that

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filled my grandmother's
garden, the serrated leaves

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of her apricot tree.

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Then a scent drifted up from
the cobblestones, a thickness,

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a palpable haze of flesh
beginning to spoil,

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of sugar turning in sunlight.

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In Amman, a tree, like the one
leaning on a wall in the piazza,

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had rained over our
childhood, baladee apricots,

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like shattered lanterns,
aglow at its base,

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darkening, gathering droves
of ants, the ravenous taking.

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Not the perfume of Damascus
mawardee nor the silk

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handkerchief of blossoms,
not the fruit's citrus kiss,

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it was the scent of spoiling,
of too much sweetness

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that claimed me.

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Long cry at the end of
the ballad of old summers.

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In Amman, it is known that
an apricot harvest can

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be ruined by untimely frost
and that, like Rome, the city

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is built on seven hills.

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