<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we met two sparks perched above Aries
\nwinking eyes at creation and time.
\nWe called them Maman and Baba and tied
\nour name in water until we became . \u0645\u0627\u0647\u06cc<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before them mother whose tongue spun a world
\nfrom the warp and weft of dead alphabets
\nsnapped us from the axis of dancing suns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We were only a ripple tucked in infinity,
\nan arabesque our mother clipped.
\nWhen we tripped on her taut words
\nshe wove new ones from the light that braided You and I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When meaning split we stitched together Us.
\nMother called the stars to an audit,
\nbut the pair had merged and become\u0645\u0627\u0647 ,
\naccomplice to our union as we
\nelided into silver crescendos
\nand called each other sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We waved back and forth at the moon
\nwhen its orbit pierced the sky,
\nraising us with a nameless love
\nwe decided to call it tide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Behind us mother whose veil looms like Cyrus
\nagainst the arc of a vast quilt
\nlaces our body with a subtler cadence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we gather your idiom, mother,
\nour secant length will thread the equinox
\nfrom the numberless polka dots that are only
\nan infinite patchwork of \u0645\u0627.
\nRostam<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lucky are those who are harvesting now,
\nAnd their hands are picking sheaves of wheat.
\n– Forough Farrokhzad<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Give me thread and I\u2019ll string together
\nthe letters of the Shahnameh,
\ncursive signs that tie the constellations
\nabove the Alborz Mountains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Against the ridge that binds Damavand
\na composite bird seams stone and horizon
\nher clarion chanting a Rostam
\nrising under different zeniths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A lapidary field describes a wider heaven,
\nground of our mothers\u2019 annulment
\nwhere our sisters\u2019 customs lie latent
\nbeneath a volcanic loam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fragments of their bodies
\nwind around the phantom currents of our fathers\u2019 dispersal.
\nWind and ash twisting like calico dervishes
\nAt a marriage dress rehearsal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ambrosian voices shift and break
\nthe heart of a steep moraines:
\na granular warp on curving tundra
\nI sew out of the dying present
\ninto a common myth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and so what if my ancients left me at the foot of a rainforest?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A phoenix has raised me among her daughters
\nand I have tilled the ashes into the thousand sediments that make a mountain stand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These fields I join in fallow and in harvest
\nthat the dust of our parents\u2019 flight may settle,
\nand I hunger and seep and arm
\nthe sere ground we fell on<\/p>\n\n\n\n
so the seeds we scatter may graze the crystal ligature
\nabove the adamant rockies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rafi, you know him?
\nBrother, friend \u2013 best man in waiting;
\njunior accountant and fantasy buy-in:
\nNatural wing-man material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A satrap cracking spines once on some break-out tribe out east,
\nhe was born in the eighties and (mensch that he is)
\ngets the game night beer (please, stay in your seat),
\nand no matter where you live (it\u2019s on the way)
\ndrops you off in his Nissan (green) Qashqai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Guys like him, married women admire his eligible MO:
\nRafi saves the table for after-work wings
\nand favours his pallet with a local microbrew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Threaded slacks baring the quadratic sweep of his slender
\nnot unshapely legs and shirt cuffs (Hudson Bay or Roots) that kiss venous forewrists:
\nRafi reads the Economist\u2019s 1843 and knows
\nwho the leader of the loyal opposition is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you looked close (not that you ever would),
\na 5-o\u2019clock stipple shading his scalloped beard might
\n(if you were that kind of person) make you look twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the high arch of some schwa begs repeating,
\nor the way Rafi (born Rafighdoust) punctures a tense syllable (the beat listing a bit)
\nmight extenuate generally tolerant folks\u2019 curiosity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He speaks in otherwise canted, generally placeless undertones:
\nif you thought about it much you\u2019d ask him where he\u2019s from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rafi has family in Canada and some cousins scattered abroad
\nand can be found cruising to a digloss of top 40
\nand Radio Javan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When he gets back on some odd Tuesday (say),
\nhe unbuttons his bespoke collar and microwaves
\nvegetable beef-cutlet stew from chamfered Tupperware
\nhis mom dispatched him with on his last visit home,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and has a dream he doesn\u2019t remember when he wakes
\nof thick air catching so his boy lungs might break,
\nand an atavistic joy of speaking a foreign tongue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He wears canvas shalwar and a worsted maman-joon vest,
\nand runs and runs and runs
\nvaguely in the direction of the west
\nwhere his father dreamed (pointing to the waning day) of starting life again
\nand the sun (he would say) lived when it set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My country, though I wasn\u2019t your birth-child
\nyou still folded me in your native soil,
\nwhere I took root; and you allowed me indistinguished rest
\nbeside the fat of your own sons,
\nand claimed me a space among them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am yours;
\nthough another birthed me
\nand a far race fathered me,
\nyours is the name I claim myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In childhood you knew me,
\nand I passed my hand over the loam same as your sons and sisters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In adolescence I felt the first jerk
\naway from your native mold, when you called me
\nby my old name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A name I had forgotten, but which
\nscrewed me to time \u2013 a country I\u2019d never known
\nbut which my father assured me
\nwas mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was rooted up from place,
\nand the infancy I had known, I understood
\nas only an idea planted in time,
\nwhen I was something called \u2013 an echo tripping
\nalong the corridors of memory \u2013 \u201cLanded.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the only land I had known as mine;
\nwhat could the word mean but the births it harvested from itself;
\nwhat could one be other than landed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know today the consequence of speaking to my faceless cousins,
\nshouting expansively over the phone lest the voice stumble through space.
\nI was landed and they were in space \u2013
\nabstractly floating until they landed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Would we need to make a space for them in this soil, then,
\nwhen they were sown here?
\nAnd if they tumbled along the stony ground and
\nhadn\u2019t properly
\nlanded?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Would they sprout and offer fruit,
\nor lay
\nin dormant statelessness,
\nwith no native land to call them by its name?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I would like my sons to look to me
\nand ask for the noble origins of their fathers,
\nor else
\naccept this land as the only one their ascendants had ever known
\nand never scurry about the fields of time to make sure
\nthey had safely
\nLanded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Monkey Training for a Circus<\/strong>
\n Give the photographers no more
\nops like this denatured rhesus monkey
\nturned tragic clown. Jammed against
\na man-made wall, he would fade out
\nof his overexposed life,
\nbut a chain collars him to a bike;
\nneck and prop bound in motion\u2019s
\ntug\u2019o war–he\u2019s screwed
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 in black and white.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4166,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions\/4166"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue24\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}