ISSUE TEN | SPRING 2018
Khareji
What am I to make of the question mark
and blank spaces that I am? Where hijab
does not call to Iran but to Muslim? And
merci is a language traded between two
rebellious cities? What am I to make of the
blank space where only I lay standing? The
television screen does not bear Iranian
against her belly. The models and poets
and teachers do the same. Where is the
world pregnant with me but in Iran? Where
my American does not belong. Where my
American is a divorced father. What is the
Iran? What does it look like? My mother,
pulling me in like an ocean yet still
threatening to drown me? What is an Iran
in an American? Does it exist? Does it
breathe? Does it stand and live on its own?
Has it ever survived?
1 خارجی : [kha-reg-GEE] foreigner, outsider, stranger, wanderer
1
Abody
My body is not a body but is a body but is not a body but is but is not but is
a bullet I've given life to There are some days where I don't want to be
a body or have a body or become a body There are some days I wish I wasn't
loved for (my) body at all That this body did not earn love or grow apple
in the tree of somebody's eye that this love grew in an orchard
somewhere between my hummingbird of heart and theirs
There are some days when my body becomes ghost When I become
the blesséd no body but then become a nobody and (my) body becomes
the thing I am haunted by the most Once, a boy held
my breath in the palm of his hand and all he felt was flesh
the warm of breast the dark pink of areola around his lips but
an Olympus of bodies have felt this flesh this smile maybe
these lips and flint tongue these hips and legs the intersection of my
arm hooked in the crook of theirs but none have
broken through the precipice the soggy ghost of me
the deep the dark matter that lies beneath this skin
So my body is (becomes) just a body a body that sinks
that turns decomp to soil to roadway and boulevard to
kitchen sink and crushed velvet couch to useful to some body
to my body is just a body a body ab ody abo dy a bo dy a b od
y ab o dy a bo d y a bo d yod y abo dy a bo dy a b ody
ab ody abo dy a b od y bo dy ab o dy a bo d
Sheila J. Sadr is a first generation Iranian-American poet, journalist, educator, and resident cow-enthusiast nuzzled somewhere in the southern California coast. This is her first publication in poetry. She took first place at the 2018 Jack Rabbit Poetry Slam and has been featured at The Definitive Soapbox, Two Idiots Peddling Poetry, Afrohaus Brunch, and many other gems. Find her on Instagram @ohohsheilaa.