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.

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.