Hyperion Collision, and: The Ring, and: Soorj

Hyperion Collision, and: The Ring, and: Soorj Armen Davoudian (bio) Hyperion Collision Back home, I visit the new auto shop, Hyperion Collision (you can't make this stuff up) on Lyric Avenue, and stand and watchDad working alone over a broken car. A headlamp shrouds his face in a white glarelike the Prophet's in a Persian miniature. (A battered flock await his healing touch. ) He bends under the open hood, comes up twenty years younger in another shop, to stand next to his father, tall and proud, joined in the fluid brotherhoodwhose bonds are sealed in oil, thicker than blood. Welcome to Davoudian Family Auto!Behind the camera, I snap a photo. End Page 21 The Ring I slide on my father's wedding ring (it's a long story) over my index finger, Dad's soaped and Windexed finger quiveringand swollen with arthritis, a hand-me-downkeepsake from his own father, now no longer …Basturma and fattoush, baba ghanoushmy new necktie dips into, milky louchearagh gulped neat in one swift bloodshot flightinto the bridegroom's arms, the bride's long whitetaffeta train— Not so fast! As ourclumsy protagonist hovers midairabove low clouds of dry ice and charmeuse, double the hair spray, square off all the shoes: it's 1989 in Isfahan. ________ It's 1989 in Isfahan, another bride and groom walk down the aisleon a Naïni carpet and cloud nine: my mother, young and doll-faced in a shawlof lace and faux-pearl beading, a little shy;my father with a twinkle in his eyefrom the camera flash, sporting his ringand a straight hairline still. Two hands entwineon the next page: her French acrylics clashwith his mechanic's nails, each worn half-mooneclipsed with grease he's scrubbed with a wire brushto no avail. And yet she's murmuring, I do, I do. Now he may kiss the bride. I wish I could have been there by their side. End Page 22 ________ I wish I could have been there. By their side, holding my father's arm, could that be him, first love and friend, grandfather and guide—I wish he could be here, where we call home …Roused like a genie from the silver ring-back tone back home, put him on speakerphone: "Stop that kid from reading. He'll go blind. "Unhappy in his body, the kid's all mind, or so he thinks, turning from life to books, because he'll never get by on his looks? He loves his mother and other boys too much, and everything he says will come out botched. Was it for this they abandoned everythingin the Islamic Republic of Iran? ________ In the Islamic Republic of Iran, we do not have such a phenomenon. The West is stealing clouds from Persian skies. Death to America! Militarize!Close all the mosques, lock up all the prayersin a No-Fly list to justify our wars. My ill-matched countries, 'tis of you I singas bombs and rockets bursting on the air-waves and our screens give proof to your common causethat flags exist, that God is still out theresomewhere. Recast the self-fulfilling ringAuden forecast Bin Laden by: that thoseto whom evil is done, must do preemptive evil—the nonsense palindrome whereby we live. End Page 23 ________ The nonsense palindrome whereby we livethe future as already past, backward, fooled even Shakespeare. No poet can redrawor edit the tide of time almighty, no versereverse the flow or add to the reserveof hours trickling through the cracks. But dearreader, as we hang briefly on this thread, I feel in my gut the tug of each dark linemade taut before it breaks against the nilmargin where all life goes. And so I'll loopthe unwinding tapes back onto the spoolof my one reel, my father's wedding ring, admitting I was wrong, and with a grinaccept the future I've been given to live. [End Page. . .