Association of Iranian American Writers

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