The wind carried many mouth-watering smells: boiling cow fat, sweet pomegranate seeds, ripe and bulbous figs, crunchy, grease-drenched tadik, and slabs of salty tachin. Reshaleh stood outside of the kitchen, her wet hair dripping into the pebbles below. She could hear the kettle's soft whimpering and Belghez's shuffling across the floor. The cook, shaped like the full-bottomed eggplants she often used to flavor her dishes, turned around with Reshaleh's entrance. Belghez's smile stretched her face, specifically her nose, so for a moment it resembled a ripe pear crowned with a single prick of sweat.

The kitchen itself was admittedly plain. The counters were sturdy and gray and only one shade lighter than the walls, which bore the usual expressions of old age, most notable were the large smatterings of soot. Therefore, decorations were instead provided by the sights and smells of many different foods sizzling, brewing, or simmering to life in several pots and pans. In the farthest left corner rested a dozen figs, which had been plucked at the peak of ripeness, so that their dark purple flesh smelled sweeter than the sweetest cherry jam. Only inches away from the figs glowed a watermelon nearly three feet long and four feet wide, while that night's dinner, of saffron dusted rice, simmered into completion. Reshaleh liked to think that by standing in the middle of the kitchen every aroma would perfume her hair and flavor her skin.

"Would you like a taste?"

Belghez pinched a fig by its stem before Reshaleh could reply, and placed it into the young girl's palm, where it rested a moment before she drew it into her mouth. Everything but the delicate seeds dissolved. Reshaleh crunched a moment on the seeds, some of which found themselves wedged between her teeth, so that Belghez began to laugh. Her chuckles shook her heavy breasts and rattled her plump thighs before fading like the curls of silver smoke escaping from a nearby pan.

image by laila riazi

Sometimes I wonder why I turned vegetarian. Perhaps because I cherished the bustling chicken coops of my childhood, which smelled sweetly of warm sawdust and fresh feces. Perhaps because the last word you spoke to me, you spoke while I stared down at my unfinished meatloaf, and now any whisper of that word stirs uneasy recollections. Perhaps because a raw steak oozes with blood and the flat echo of a cow's helpless moans. One day I might return to chicken legs for lunch, pulling stringy pink meat to reveal a polished bone. I imagine that I would lunge forward and vomit, dumping one thousand angry memories onto the cold floor.

I miss you, simply

your sallow complexion, the grim, gray-eyed baby of peer pressure and social obligation, revealed that you are a man of expectation, struggling to catch up with wealthier, worldlier, worthier "friends", who think of champain as they think of beautiful women bundled in fur: pleasurable, disposable, forgettable. That picture always gets me. I squint first, in disbelief that it is you: painfully thin, disintegrating, everything either pulling away, sinking in, sagging down, everything but your sterile white smile, a gash splitting open your face-- fooling yourself so that you can fool the world.

Sophia-- dazed and confused--a thin little thing with a light brown bob floating just below her ears, thin and delicate. (Her eyes great silver marbles.) She questioned all that shifted and twisted around her and often collected dead mice floating atop the water's green surface. She combed dry their damp, knotted fur before placing their plump bodies inside plastic bags where they stared at her with empty, expressionless eyes. Sophia walked into the house with a dirt-smeared forehead, tugging along a peculiar smell.

When blood roses swirl down the toilet
I know the time has come
to banish Mickey Mouse
and reel in textbooks
heavier than Cinderella’s pumpkin coach.
Some nights
I hear them whispering my name.
Desperate for entry,
their gentle scratches yank me
backward
a thousand years.
As always,
I am left abandoned.
Flattened tears
in a pyramid shape
form that familiar face.

Yes, you are Well-Rounded...

Yes, you are well-rounded.
Like tumble-weed, cess-pools
and other pleasant things.
Like Ghangis-Khan’s
fleshy bum,
the ruthless summer sun,
and my mother even after her one-week
diet.

The World is a Shell---Deh Bala, Iran

photos by Laila Riazi

Those days we leapt over brick walls and into secret gardens, stealing glances behind our shoulders to make certain that no one watched. Those days shower water hissed and spat unto the blue tiles, blowing hot air into our faces. We sighed because the world was carefree. It was our reality. One day the stars will shiver cold while the night coyote purrs beside the lemon tree as I swallow your sickness and take it within me to grow like a flower, damp. Remember the housemaid, bloated like rotting fruit, scraggly hairs dusted her chin and she looked at us with so much love. We gazed from atop the flat rooftop and threw unripe apples, our fruity ammunition, from above. The world is a shell, but [honey] it’s always been hell, and I’m writing (this) to you with love.