I Fell In Love With a Double-Yolk Egg
 
In the egg
that cracked its head,
a tree and butterfly were dancing,
yellow wings, yellow leaves,
yellow, yellow—
breaking away from trunk. Who
painted all that yellow in there?

I’m falling in love with movement,
the swirl of yolk, a sapling hand
on the butterfly’s back, a spin, a dip,
the swish of nucleus
flying into the rafters of bowl,


and here comes my lovemaking
hand, wanting to hold it all together:
how the egg and milk marry bread,
dressed in a dash of cinnamon.
Exotic, scented gown.
Polygamous ritual.
Eyes like ovenlight.


I disappeared into it all,
skipped across the rim of shell,
forgot my name and where I came from.

Hadn’t I been to the source and back?


When they found me, I was dancing with apples
next to the handle of a floured pin.

Melissa Studdard
Persian translation by Sheema Kalbasi

I Fell In Love With A Double - Yolk Egg By Melissa Studdard

Letter 

Tonight, as you walk out
into the stars, or the forest, or the city,
look up
as you must have looked
before love came,
before love went,
before ash was ash.

Look at them: the city’s
mists, the winters.
And the moon’s glass
you must have held once
in beginning.

That new moon
you must have touched once
in the waters,
saying change me, change
me, change me. All I want
is to be more of what I am.

Joseph Fasano
Persian translation by Sheema Kalbasi

Letter by Joseph Fasano. Translation into Persian and recitation by Sheema Kalbasi

There’s something about your voice,
The unique sound of each spoken word,
Formed by the kiss of lips I haven’t met.
 
Your river of expression flows as wonder,
Spilling over the banks of my spine.
Flooding the shores of my entirely.
 
Should your lip ever dance across my ear,
I fear that I may drown; momentarily.
Weightless; carried in your currents.
 
Christopher Madsen
Persian translation by Sheema Kalbasi

Untitled by Christopher Madsen. Translation into Persian and recitation by Sheema Kalbasi.

Ashke Ladan, a poem by Sheema Kalbasi. From Sangsar (سنگسار) poetry collection, Persian, 2005. Recited and performed at the University of Maryland, 2007.  

اشک لادن

Yad Kon, a poem by Sheema Kalbasi. Sheema wrote this poem on November, 1996 in Hamburg, Germany. It was first published in 2002. 

یاد کن

Time is Sixty Seconds Short

You say nothing. I say nothing. My arms come out of the blouse. Your hands get smaller under the blanket. We each reach for the skin. I want to know how it is to lay next to you before a dot puts an end to us. Before the whole world flips.

I don’t want forever. This is now. This is when ends disappear and the alarm bell doesn’t shell my affairs.

Moving as the wind moves. Rolling, curling, pulling, forming, feeling, and the sense is finding its way, half-asleep.

It is the hour of travelers, caresses, and reading the secret lines.

I want to be the watch on your wrist. Fix me quick and slow. Tell me on a blank page that we look at the same sky every night. Divide me into your reds, greens, purples, stars and joy.

What is this habit of your urgent need to vanish, diving into your shadow. Don’t go absent on me. I want to read you. I want your truth. Don’t pull the blanket over your head. Let us agree upon on a time before I turn thirty five.

I do mean to stand forever. It is just that my forever may expire all too soon. 

10:54 AM, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2006

زمان شصت ثانیه کم دارد

Neither Night Nor Day

I want to hold you so that night and day can't find their way through. I want to write letters that were meant to be read only by you. I want to write you words that may find a life, but I don't know how far I can go, how much I can write. After all, there is a life, and there is a life.

Each word you read from me carries a thousand loves, each sentence carries a thousand more. Each time I sit to write to you, I need to get my conscious unconscious and my unconscious into a conscious state so that what I write is not burning down a heart or a house.

I love you. I don't know if there are other words that can carry as much meaning. I loved you when I stood with my toes freezing in the telephone booth years ago, calling you oceans away, and I love you today, still oceans away. If there was such a thing as a parallel universe where life was what we wrote down, you could see me right now holding you in my arms so that neither night nor day could find their way through.

11:27 AM, Thursday, September 17, 2009

نه شب، نه روز

Oslo

I’ve been here
before, hotels 
in bluish light,
squares of ice.
Outside the city
opera house
taxi tires
crunch on pavements
of salt, first
departures, I begin
a letter describing the day,
knowing you’ll
never read it. Later, 
among the commuters,
I’m on the street,
and, for an instant,
I feel,
you’re here.
Ice, lights, 
the wind’s knowing sere.
It’s been two years.

John Freeman, Maps, 2017
Persian translation by Sheema Kalbasi

Sheema Kalbasi

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