The Brooklyn Rail

A talk in an old room…

A talk in an old room in this or that institution, here and now
I wish there was a corner.
I’m not meant to be in this room.
I wonder if they ever consider that this form, the circle, is too intense, too powerful. Exposed and
surrounded. I don’t know you.
I’ve been trying to quietly touch my paper, to fold.
It never works.
It stubbornly Crinkles; giggles, causes trouble in minor noises
And, I finally speak up
“There once was, or perhaps was not
Under this bruised-blue dome of ours
A silent protest,
…
And we trusted each other
Without words….”
I try to let the story be told
But language slips in this room
The story looks around for listeners and slowly vanishes.
The Farsi words whisper “the crow hasn’t made it home”
I am lost in thoughts with my paper again.
I mumble to the paper “but,
Did we cry?”

A logic for an uprising…

This is how it always comes back to me.
We are the protest
Silence
They banned language
So we walked
Willing to die
(Perhaps because we didn’t know.
We were surrounded by the thickness of our passion for life)
We refused, we objected
We claimed the streets
And then went home,
To dance together
Always in secret
We became nothing
A people on the walk, woven in silence
An every day of a busy city
And they feared us
A non-protest, we began to desire

I’m trying to recall a failed revolution
With no traces left
but the way our eyes still tear up and we lose language.
“I was there.”