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.

A Summertime Melody--Shiraz, Iran

photo by Laila Riazi

Reza sits cross-legged on a coarse Persian rug as the brightly clad city girls sticky their chins with watermelon juice. With sight of the santoor player’s handsome face, they pinch their palms to suppress laughter. How to suppress the birth of a blush deeper a red than the stripes on his shirt? Reza kisses the santoor’s keys with delicate fingers and the music purrs, twisting awake underneath honey-slivers of afternoon light. He sighs, thinking of how the girls must concentrate more on his black-marble-eyes than on the mellifluous sound pouring from the ancient instrument before him. Reza’s bare toes wiggle with the rising melody, and the city girls turn their heads away, biting their lips until they bleed.