Home, Bitter Home
Maryam Ala Amjadi
From nowhere
this house is three cigarettes away
They can always sniff it out
from the oil, the fathers don’t bring
and the combats of combs that never run
Short of the sun,
the women’s hair never grow long
And their wombs
are wrinkled balloons
that have never soared for sour grapes
So with all the eggs on our faces
we have deadpan omelets for breakfast
and eat our hearts out of our mouths
Then we creep in to lull our dreamful beds
Heads that sleep around don’t mind wakeful tales
In this house
the windows are doors that
push faith to fate
and the doors are windows as
they close on ceilings that floor walls
When owls hoot
We hiss hello to hand down dreams
Dream-dying
we gamble goodbye with goats
that bleat escape to front doors
The women draped in curtains
that sift the suns of their faces
always talk of here
that is heard as there
And these bricks have rats
that are never prey to ravens
but gnaw word by word
at our inhuman prayer
to humanize scarecrows
In this house
we hide what we seek
and try to find our loss
tip-toeing on our hands
in our tongue tied shoes
Until the telephone rings a bell
and we know that wireworms
have fished another voice into sounds
And so we saw
what we see
and the sea
see-saws
in the same boat with us
Yet we breathe in theirs
and brood on mines that explode
into minute seeds
but never hatch into hours
for the second
one of us turns their back
first fingers read the last words
in Braille:
From nowhere
this house is three cigarettes away.
Maryam Ala Amjadi - (born 1984, Tehran) is an Iranian poet, essayist and translator who has spent the impressionable years of her childhood in India. She also has an M.A. in English Literature from University of Pune. Ala Amjadi who writes primarily in English was the winner of the Silver Medal in the 14th National Persian Literature Olympiad (2001) and was awarded Honorary Fellowship in Creative Writing by the International Writers Program (IWP) at University of Iowa, U.S.A. (2008).
