Monday, August 2, 2021

Saba Pakdel : Three poems

 

 

 

Cherry City

have to write something for (not about) my city
pairs like cherries – ripe
wear them like earrings maybe

pick them up to squeeze in my hands tightly
think it's blood?

I laugh out loud but
by the time you believe these are the cherries

that are crushed
I cry streams of blood

in
my

hands

have to write a lament
cry my city through eyes
long, uninterrupted, in one breath to the end of this street

his name is Richard, I mean a street in Yaletown
you think he is a middle-aged white guy from the south of Britain or the exit with a b

as in berries
as in crushed berries

as in bomb bombarding bedtime boom
 

but that’s the name of the street where I walk
in memory of a memory of a rememory of a far street
with lines of trees that reach into the sky

standing on their toes and longing for the sun every spring
it is a pity that a rainy year is upon us

but
have to write a romance for the remains of my city

like the daffodils at the crossroads, you wanted to buy them all for me
I knew they wouldn’t bloom every day

grief that is
to the heart of a child who has to find

a lover
like you who’d buy all flowers together

how long do you think daffodils live but ripe
like a bleeding city of cherries

 

 

#176

Some are buried
in the ground / memory of the land
some cremated or

drawn in the                     free               bordered waters
some

missing
bodies                        somewhere / memory of the time

some are burst
into // pieces

(fires, floods, earthquakes, tsunami, any human-made-look-natural disasters, etc.)
some decide to not be

the very intention of being: not being
(50.5% Firearm, 12.9% Poisoning, 2.4% Fall, 1.9% Cut/Pierce, …)

some yet are decided for how not to be!

but only 176 see missile(s)
framed in an oval-shaped window
coming closer

closer
. . .

 

 

Zero

in the naked birth of time
the Zero Point

is a heavy burden on memory                    detonation:

stretchy
continuous

deafening
the beginning of the earth

burst or birth? the center of an explosion
is not the autumn

colors shake you
you fall
 

we age without pause
as old as the shade of a tree
older than the trunk

century of movements over time
we de-memory anger as tears are the flood of history
 

silent people
are appalling when the Zero hits
their words are silent to naked ears
 

listen to the offspring of disaster
head of the earth coming out of a womb
conceived at the Zero point of time

listen for
the burst birth

 

 

 

Saba Pakdel was born into a family of artists in Tehran, Iran. Growing up in a home of theatre, literature, and cinema, Saba breathed in the quality air of arts from an early age. She completed her BA and MA in English; attended and coordinated literary workshops and poetry readings; published poems, translations, and essays in Persian journals before leaving her home country to Canada in 2017. Once settled, she continued her studies at SFU (her second master’s degree in English) and gained admission to the Ph.D. program in English at UVic.