POETRY

Roza Ferdowsmakan is an Iranian born writer living in Phoenix, Arizona. Strangers in the Skies of the Dead is her first book of poems. On the Persian side, she has been influenced by the harmony and tranquility of spoken poetry, like a dance in which the dancer gets swept up by undulations of imagery and meter. On the English side, she has been influenced by the confessional style of Anne Sexton and the sensuality of Anais Nin and Pablo Neruda. Her style is observational and confessional, and she writes of her own memories of people and experiences, as well as imagined memories >>> FinishingLinePress.com

Two thinly bodies
of glass frame the walls
in a queen-looking room
big as mother’s
where I breathe
and exhale
every foreign grain male.
Mirrors spy

I dance as a nude
in dark with his hums
in each of my ears
each new lover’s song.
Mirrors hear.

They watch as I grow
my garden grey hairs
in pickled up laughter
aged sixty years
and open the jar
to drain out my tears.
Miss Roza, how ugly you are,
Mirrors say.

Some nights without light
I realize my face
searching me
in the glass
as if trapped in a crate
someone hid
in the yard
still alive.
Mirrors reach.            

Naps in the noon hour
find me dizzy in dreams
where the room
is a fortress
and the walls house the queen
who opens glass gates
through the mirrors
showing clouds
draped in white,
though I enter not yet                
for the pearls in my pockets
still beat out a pulse
under hand.
Mirrors wait.

I walk every morning
bared breasts
out of bed
Italia is calling
from a cup ready made
by mother of mother
waking hours much sooner
than birds.
Mirrors smell.

Glass plates know me well
for each eyelash
that sways in air
and every headache
that bombs my head.
They are me
only backwards
locked in a cage
no real key-hole
to walk through
into something
more real.
Mirrors know.