The Very First Let’s finish this. Stern, fierce, unamused. I only listen cause I’m a good listener, she once told me. I believed in magic when I was innocent still, around the time dad bought me a pair of football boots, my very first. Kiss? No, we’re far past that point of bridges crumbling like your most precious dream. Remember what we promised on the beach? No? Lucky you! I’ve always had rotten fortune ever since that day I got injured on my first official football game. What a waste of boots.
The Line Self-contained miracles, a whole ecosystem in a bottle made of too-fragile glass that obliviously holds the weight of an entire world. Entangled leaves and roots fighting for existence as if they somehow knew beyond what they experience significance ends.
Delivery Knock on the door scissors my daydreaming unjustifiably. What could possibly be so urgent that warrants this violent disruption? Nothing short of birth. It’s just another postman with yet another letter from that same corner of the world where I used to be rooted deep. I am a stranger in life. I throw the letter onto the pile of unopened mail that is beginning to outgrow me like an ambitious offspring. In a shroud of clouds. I resist the urge to hold a conversation with somebody who is not here anymore, so much so that the lights start to scream at me. Laughter is a disease. The neighbor next door bangs on the wall per usual in the evening to signal his return from a long day of avoiding duties. Nooses shouldn’t be loose. If I don’t respond soon my neighbor will come prying and this would all have been for nothing at all. Stillness is everything.
For Sale Put a name to my face, just this once. Please. Tomorrow I’ll be selling it at the pawn shop before it loses all value. I’ll spell out my name for you, if you’d like, I’ll write it down on a piece of garbage so you won’t have to hold on to it for long. Perhaps you’ll recognize me on somebody else. Someday. Maybe even recall the times you mistook me for someone you loved. I’m taking this thing off for good this time. Come see me off at the pawn shop tomorrow, just this once. Please.
Burgundy The more I sit in the bathtub the more I think about Burgundy. Charles the Bold endeavored to unite, but was defeated again and again and time again, finally dying after a mere 10-year rule. Heirless. I think I know what he felt in that ultimate winter of his death. Like I am surrounded by water in the bathtub, he too had enemies all around. The French to the west, the Habsburgs to the east, and so many traitors from within. When Charles died, everybody was too occupied smelling blood to mourn his passing. Nobody remembered his aspirations of unity and reform. Instead, they nicknamed him The Reckless because he dared to strive. His body was pierced with spears and a halberd. His right cheek was chewed off by a wolf near a frozen river. His blood must have sprayed a sharp contrast against the white of the snow, the same, I think, as the Burgundy would, splashed against the white tiles of my bathroom.
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Hossein Sobhani is a poet and translator from Bushehr, Iran. He is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
