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.
