After my dad’s funeral

After my dad’s funeral, my mother got married to a butcher. I cried until I lost my voice, and then somebody I didn’t know transplanted a flower into my throat. Later, I became a one-eyed cat who could fly from mouth to mouth. I was light like a daydream masking the face of an immigrant child. The butcher coughed savagely, shaking his iron long tail to disturb me. I felt hungry, running toward my mother’s thigh to ask for a new chance. She said: no way, babe. He is our god. Just kneel before him. Just be a good girl.

I crawled into a corner, burying my face into the torn curtains calculating the distance between heaven and my father’s coffin. I wanted to be there. I wished to make a candy from the silky clouds& send it to him. I desired badly to meet his god and ask him if he was real or surreal. My stepfather gets closer. He holds scissors in one hand, and a cactus in the other. His grin swallowed the room.

Ode to my grandmother

My grandmother is an Alzheimer’s patient.
Last year she lost a tooth and memory. She began to confuse laughing with crying.
She started wearing our curtains, dating a late actor, and playing cards with my Shirazi cat.
“I love you, Granny” I always say. But she looks the other way waiting for Azrael.
She tells me how beautiful she used to be when she was my age.
I smile. My grandmother says she had a hoopoe once but couldn’t remember where he went. Maybe he hid in my chest? She wonders
she touches her nipples as if she tries to discover something new about them.
My little hoopoe, I miss you! She says with tears in both eyes.
The moment her last tear kissed the floor, I heard a sudden and strange sound coming from within, and then, just then my grandmother was gone.

The Trail

As usual, Israfil blows the trumpet. I sit on the edge of an animal’s tongue,

Thinking about how many times God massaged my neck.

The sky pours out random rumors about the curse of the Pharos.

I wave at a chimpanzee who looks like my father. We laugh.

I see a familiar face who reminds me of a popular leader.

Now he has turned into a clove flower.

How long were I here weaving more fairy tales over living and dead?

A cherry tree wears a rosary, buzzing like a bumblebee.

I am looking for anything to blame God for. The last hour will come after a few seconds.

When my face becomes a starfish, and when the sun gets smaller to fit the size of my pocket,

When water fills my grassy mouth, I begin to count the scars carved around my belly.

A lot of moons and poems mixed with my blood. Do you know laughter?

I ask God, who hasn’t a throne or golden chairs. He squeezes my hand and whispers into my ears, I am the inventor. Three little angels engrave the first letters of their names on the tree of paradise. I run, wondering how Adam and Eve ate each other.

I still hear the breaking news, although this is my second death.

God was holding a pair of scissors, managing to touch the tip of my nose.

Everything is purple. Another version of me was crucified to a wall.

I kneel on a prayer mat. Butterflies circled around my body.

Now I understand that I am preparing for a new death. Good girl,

Israfil says. I smile, swallowing more stars. God knows how to create entertainment.

The crime

Someone knocked me down& mailed my corpse to a floating cavern.

Each part of my body sings a lullaby.

Sometimes I hear elephants telling a folk tale.

Sometimes I hear frogs drumming out of my ear.

The angel of death boils a banana to feed his young.

I am sweating wondering if the hell was a short joke.

A blind woman shedding her skin. She has a witch’s fingers.

I look into her eyes& it takes me to a tulip garden.

My arm turned into a wise man.it talks to me as if he spent all his life as a philosopher.

I kneel among many little moons.

God is nearby, wearing a grand hat made of milky cloud.

Talk to me, he says pointing his finger to an upper window.

I have a genie inside, I say.

God laughs. This is an old joke.

I try to kill myself, but I remember that I am already dead.

The man who slaughtered me was an artist.

He knows how to squeeze castor oil into my fully open eyes.

Transformation

I dream of cockatoo birds sipping milk from the sky

I fly from corner to corner holding sugar, wine, and more funny jokes.

God is up sitting on his throne watching how the earth dances under my bare feet.

Kisses, wishes and more than that riding silver horses.

Creamy cloud falling down close to my head singing an old song.

My bones covered by the rhythm. My tongue turned into a butterfly. I sway in the air thinking of the worlds I pass dreaming of more honey rivers to have more fun, wondering how many orphan girls still live within me.

I try to raise both hands throwing them to a new universal castle. I feel new again. I sense more than being alive. There is something beyond happiness. There is delicious beyond joy.

Believe me, there is music you have never heard of.

Hallucinations

I had a dream of cows lead some people;

Who were humming an old-fashioned poem.

The sound of the flute was coming out from the teeth of an ancient Oak tree.

In that dream also, there was a moon and a half falling into my mother’s lap

She was stitching a great piece of the sky upon the little heads of three terrified cats.

I had a dream of being a gorilla

The dirt was caked perfectly with my fingers

I was another version of myself

Peeping into another world

Bathing in another water.

My body had billions of rooms

Empty ones without guests.

I was closed to be a river

But the temptation to be something bigger

Made me kneel

Swerving like a verse

Hovers like an angel’s napkin.

Shivers like a love song

In a poet’s chest.