Writing About You
By Farnaz Fatemi
Sometimes, writing about you
soothes each wound,
encases the bitter in a saccharine shell,
demands I let my focus go soft
to welcome lost memories, phrases,
the way your everyday walk
was a hip swagger.
Then the pendulum swings; perhaps
I see a photograph of us,
can’t recall dates, our states,
(which intimacies were we sharing?)
I write you into my past
and it’s too much to imagine.
The scene falls apart. Words
don’t work, or they do,
I see now, too well.
***
In Solidarity with Journalists, Authors, Poets, and Filmmakers in Iran: The Association of Iranian American Writers Presents a Literary Reading by Iranian American Writers.
Sunday, March 7, 4-6 pm
Maude Fife Room, Wheeler Hall 315, UC Berkeley
$5 Students/$10-20 others (donations to Committee to Protect Journalists)
Poetry by Farnaz Fatemi and Shideh Etaat; Fiction by Laleh Khadivi (author of The Age of Orphans); Siamak Vossoughi, and Shookofeh Rajabzadeh.
With a special report by Nazy Kaviani (CPJ representative) and a musical performance by Hossein and Sarah of Aleph Null. Co-sponsored by UC Berkeley Dept. of English, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Omid Advocates, United4Iran, and the Iranian Student Alliance in America (ISAA).
“. . . Don’t live in the world as if you were renting or here only for the summer, but act as if it was your father’s house. . .Believe in seeds, earth, and the sea, but people above all. Love clouds, machines, and books, but people above all.” Nazim Hikmet, 20th century Turkish poet
