on a planet that hasn’t yet been discovered
even if they take the wind’s fingerprints
they won’t discover the trace of your kiss
We must go into the street
although the cars pass between us and the sun
we must go into the street
all this sky won’t fit into the window
I want to sunbathe
in the southernmost part of your soul
the ceiling light isn’t worth the pains of hell
the one who draws the curtains
doesn’t know
always the sound of the person standing on the other side of the line
tomorrow he’ll arrive
whatever they want, it’s all right
they’ll tear off the door’s hinges
tonight I’ll come from the dusky moonlight
and I’ll cut into pieces all the curtains and cloaks
and leave them to make kites, and for moonlit nights
they’ll rent a room in the world’s suburbs
and I shall have gone
I want to give my blouse to the sun
*
Strike! Seventy lashes
so that I’ll become more of a woman
beside the stones
and my body will fill with pomegranates103
I won’t repent
“Stand aside! Halt!”
they’ve been through my pockets
and there’s no other thought there
than the sun, that is sick of veils
Sara Mohammadi-Ardehali
Born 1976
Sara Mohammadi-Ardehali was born and currently lives in Tehran, and has an MA degree in Sociology from Tehran’s Alameh Tabatabai University.
*
A Full-Time Position
No man wants
to fall in love with a woman
who works in a circus
one of those women who has to walk a tight-rope
He falls in love with a woman
who might fall at any moment
and if she doesn’t fall
thousands of people clap their hands
to applaud her
*
Woman
Everything is obvious
at thirty-five
without
your having to be naked
*
The Smell of Blood
I swim
from this side to that
I go underwater
for as long as I can hold my breath
I trail my fingers along the bottom of the pool
suddenly
the memory of you
returns, swimming toward me like a shark
*
Difficult Evening
My hand
stretches toward the telephone
it comes back again
like a child to whom they’ve said
the cakes on the table
are for guests
*
Meeting
Like a leopard
he emerged
from among the bushes
with Genghis Khan’s smile on his lips
his black eyes flickered
he held out his hand
the poets of Nayshapur
the multi-colored silks of Balkh
the granaries of Khorasan and Khwarazm104
in me
went up in flames
and turned to smoke
I shook his hand
*
Empire of Dust
I forgot
my body’s handwriting
my shoulders’ calligraphy and the contour of my laughter
I must be naked
I’ll go beneath the sun
beside the wind
I went on a trip
the Mediterranean laughed at me
it said
Why are you afraid of the water?
The Persian empire has fallen
come, with old Phoenician mariners
we’ll go sailing
*
A complete mess
Wearing comfortable slippers
he gets going
he picks up the half-open books under the bed
he folds the scattered clothes
he collects the pencils and cups
he comes behind your head
he hesitates
then brings his lips close to the softness of your ear
you sense the sound of his breath
you turn round
the room is empty
it’s a complete mess
*
Confession
I had a relationship with him
I was alone
and he was alone too
we were both tired
I of the earth
he of the sky
our rendezvous was at midnight
he came to the window
you won’t believe it
he smiled at me
he was very beautiful
extraordinarily beautiful
I remember
it was the fourteenth night
and
he
was complete, full
Shabnam Azar
Born 1977
Shabnam Azar’s work as a journalist led to her having to leave Iran in 2009. She has a postgraduate degree in media arts from the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, and has published four books of poetry in Iran and Germany.
*
Stop
Emptier than an abandoned house
emptier than the leftovers of a splendid party
emptier than a door left half open
a hand that has reached for something
and is left in the air, waiting
a rotted flag
faded and worn
old
I look at the days that have gone
at the faded colors of old photographs
at a mouth
that has not yet forgotten how to laugh
no matter how strong
the pillar
the house finally collapses
sounds
finally end in silence
and shadows
return into things
tomorrow
breathes
greedily
and this old clock
whose white face is hung in the room’s cold air,
for all its life
thinks of the silence between tick and tock
*
Free Fall
Alone
he ran on
a few steps ahead of me
before he fell
on the road to freedom
freedom is beautiful
even
when you’re in free fall
toward death
even
when you grow cold
lying in your own blood
Bullets!
dear bullets
please
go back to your shell casings
and we too
will go back to our homes
Rosa Jamali
Born 1977
Born in Tabriz, Rosa Jamali has an MA in English Literature from Tehran University. As well as poetry, she has written a play, Shadows (2007), and has translated W. B. Yeats into Persian.
*
A shortcut to an unknown spot (a crime that I’ve revealed
)
With your permission
We’ll assess whether this unknown sign is correct
the crime that I’ve revealed
they’ve exiled me to an unknown spot
and it’s no distance from being underground
Speak, say something, confess!
I came into the world on the day you stroked my shroud
my constant entertainment was a dark loophole
my evidence a page from my sister’s identity card
they ascertain the strength of gravity the moment a stone
doesn’t sink in water
Speak, say something, confess!
the crime that I’ve revealed
The crime that I’ve revealed
That’s great!
I don’t know if it’s four o’clock or five
if today’s Thursday or Friday
if it’s October or November
if it’s winter or autumn
minutes are halted, forbidden
I’m guilty of murdering someone
it’s not the first time
it’s not the last time
it’s the thousandth time they’ve put me in prison
I have thirty seconds
for years my shadow has followed your shadow
my hair is a tangled spider’s web
there’s algae between my fingers
I won’t look into your pupils anymore
you’ve spilled cold milk on my bones
you’ve shot a volley of bullets into my pupils
for thirty-five days I’ve been in love with corpses
though this is an inaccurate account
That’s great!
his eyeballs are cloudy with pneumonia
my breasts feel crushed
they give me a blind man’s stick
and looking at the calendar is forbidden
That’s great!
A woman is screaming, vertical and horizontal, at eighty degrees on the clock from the welts the stick makes
a woman is screaming round the clock
a woman is screaming, a few seconds, a
moment of surrender, it’s ninety degrees
a woman is screaming and the gashes and a
wall-clock, one hundred and eighty degrees
a woman is screaming / it’s half past midnight /
the circle’s complete
it’s three hundred and sixty degrees
A revolver’s diagonal shape on the wall
the smell of blood’s sent me crazy
Speak, say something, confess!
it looks like bad weather’s coming
the world is a short woman who’s been slashed down
Speak, say something, confess!
they’ve exiled me to an unknown spot
a slab of rubble drops into water
and it’s no distance from being underground
a woman is screaming . . .
a woman is screaming . . .
a woman is screaming . . .
Hengameh Hoveyda
Born 1978
Born in Tehran, Hengameh Hoveyda has a bachelor’s degree in Persian Literature; she currently lives in Paris, where she is pursuing a doctorate at the Sorbonne.
*
Loneliness
Fold yourself in your embrace
embrace yourself and sleep
this is the only thing you have
your hands
if you don’t put your trust in loneliness
like a scarecrow swaying back and forth in the wind
your hands
will become a nest for crows
and they’ve stolen your eyes . . .
*
The Criminal
They have exiled me in myself
so far away
that neither my voice reaches anyone else
nor anyone else’s reaches me
Fatemeh Shams
Born 1983
Born in Mashhad, Fatemeh Shams left Iran in 2006 and settled in England. She studied first at the Agha Khan University in London, and then at Oxford, where she was awarded a PhD in Iranian Studies. She has published two collections of poetry in Persian, and a selection of her poems has been translated into English. In 2012 she received the Zhaleh Esfahani poetry award in London for the best young Iranian poet. She is currently Assistant Professor of Modern Persian Literature at the University of Pennsylvania.
*
Never to fall asleep . . .
Never to fall asleep, because of a nightmare’s fear
To sit awake each night until the dawn is here
Caught between waking and sleep, as if unsteady with drink,
In the name of life to die, with blindness drawing near
In futile empty love repeated endlessly
In saying, “I love you, my dear! Do you love me?”
In wanting things that reach their end but never start,
In pointless work, in no work’s sour banality
To have no memory, no border, and no place,
To drift about in men’s and women’s cold embrace,
To drag with you a suitcase and three hundred books
To have, among all colors, a shroud’s conceal your face
To tear my heart from those who wore a mask and all they mean
From men whose inward being is a reeking foul latrine
To tear my heart from that strange city of my childhoods
Whose earth holds sorrow still that’s innocent and clean
From endless hesitating, from not returning there,
In waking dreams without you, in exile’s arms and air,
In boundless longing for the things I’ll never see
In “hope,” that lovely word whose absence brings despair
Without a homeland, without love, in wild perplexity,
Within this narrow cul-de-sac from which I can’t walk free
To vomit you from me, and ah to ask you with my love
“O wounded, worn-out country! Do you still think of me?”
*
W for War (3)
In memory of Aziz and the children of war in Kobane105
How hard it was to stay alive
In the war, the bullets’ rain,
When everywhere they looked
Were death and darkness and pain
They had to pack and leave
And travel to who-knows-where
To a geography unknown,
That was anywhere but there
Behind them their lost home
Was black with ash, ahead
A hard uneven road
And the flood of those who fled
His shoulders carried a child
His arms were around another,
Behind them ran a third
Like a mound that dust-clouds smother
Their mother was following them
A mountain of silence and dread,
Eye to eye with the war, tears flowed
Like pomegranate juice, blood-red.
Ah, but the war was brutal
Destroying her hopes with fear,
Stealing her children’s joy
With its thuggish, violent sneer.
Three children—one didn’t smile,
Three children—one had a fever,
They were homeless and silent now
Like a poem unheard forever
By the side of the road, bewildered
By the kindness of the sun,
Perhaps someone would come
And see him there, someone . . .
War came in the shape of a ma
n,
Death came in the form of the sun
His eyes were fixed on the sky, frozen
Forever, and seeing no one
And then he saw nothing forever,
And forever now he kept
His silence, and closed his infant eyes
On the crimes around him, and slept.
*
Prosecution
Pictures don’t lie
I’ve grown old
and I’ve forgotten the love I felt when I was twenty
you’ve come too late
paper’s grown expensive
postmen have had enough
planes mostly crash
and no one else’s file will ever be closed
*
Roots
Once I was a tree
with black and white crows in my hair
with upside-down roots
the ground had set my body free,
my body, my roots,
roots that were the crows’ refuge
once I was everything
a dream filled with life in a year of famine.
Fatemeh Ekhtesari
Born 1986
Fatemeh Ekhtesari was born in the town of Kashmar in the northeast of Iran. As a young women she trained as a midwife, but after enrolling at the University of Tehran she turned her attention to literature. Virtually from the beginning her writing attracted censorship and state condemnation. Her status as a poetic gadfly was confirmed when she took part in a poetry festival in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2013; on her return to Iran, she was arrested and tried for immoral behavior and blasphemy and was sentenced to ninety-nine lashes and eleven years’ imprisonment. She left Iran illegally and made her way to Scandinavia, where she now lives.
*
I was knocked up and made pregnant
By a right-wing political bore
When the dust had settled he’d left me
As if I were a whore
An artist signed my belly
He was a real celebrity
He took a selfie with my tears,
Planted a kiss on my misery
The lefties shouted, “Abort it!”
Their hammer and sickle attacked me,
The placards in their bloody hands
Were claiming that they backed me
The feminists gave me an essay106
About what some big-shot has done
Spit on his sex-obsessed mind
Not a mind but a pond full of scum
“Hey bitch, the world’s in an uproar . . .”
My mom declares, “Your life’s ok,
Call her ‘Nazanin Zahra,’
But you’re a disgrace—Enough’s enough, I say!”
I’m a painting, a ditch,
The woman in each picture, more or less,
Like a spot of blood in the toilet