IMAGINAL POEM MEANT TO BE READ ON A ROOFTOP

by Richard Jackson

You begin / somewhere/ to cry the/ murmur of life

     —Parnia Abasi, d. June 13, 2025

 

This is a poem about hope despite the fact that it

begins with the death of the twenty three year old

Iranian poet, Parnia Abassi, along with her family,

among the twisted pipes and chunks of concrete,

amid the fragments of some missile that targeted

her apartment building.

                                       This is a poem about hope 

despite the presence of swarms of flies investigating 

the ruins, searching for pieces of flesh pasted to concrete, 

despite the satellite photos that hold these specifics 

at a safe distance.

                             This is a poem that makes its appeal 

to the Imaginal world of the Persian mystics, Suhrawardi 

and Hafiz, of a world where rocks become clouds, where 

cypresses dance, where graves become doorways to

the gods and angels, a world between this one and

the one we hope to rejoin.

                                           I will become the most beautiful 

poem in the world, wrote Parnia. I’ll be the extinguished 

star/in your sky/ like smoke.

                                              This is a poem that makes

its appeal with the rooftop dwellers of Tehran, and

their own imaginal world between the rubble and the

sky, chanting slogans against the regime and us,

hoping for a life without bombs, without oppression,

unable to see where the sun is in the sky on the worst days, 

one says, but knowing it is there.

                                                     This is a poem about 

hope, for it prays with Hafiz, with Suhrawardi, with Parnia

who wrote, I row into your embrace, into this poem that

cannot go on without your own fragile lines and hopes, into 

a world only our poems can make, a world where they 

dance with the cypresses, and chant from the heart’s rooftops.

Richard Jackson is the author of 18 books of poetry including, Footprints, The Heart as Framed: New and Select Poems, and 16 books of translation, Interviews, criticism and anthologies, as well as 30 chapbooks from eastern and central European poets.. Translated into 17 languages, he was awarded the Order of Freedom Medal by the President of Slovenia for Humanitarian and literary work during the Balkan Wars and has received Guggenheim, Fulbright, NEA, NEH and Witter-Bynner, Fellowships.

CALLING MY PERSIAN SISTER-IN-LAW THE DAY THE U.S. BOMBS IRAN

by Carol Boutard

 

 

We’re not close, the thicket

between us hard to cross after years

of my snide asides about her aloof Persian polish 

and her opinions about my sloppy American life. 

We chat about the weather in Santa Barbara, 

my brother’s iffy health, her worry for the citrus trees 

she had to leave behind when they moved. 

 

I remember stories about her childhood—

the neighborhood where she lived,

its tree-lined quiet and shaded gardens

far from crowded downtown Tehran,

skyscrapers like gravestones in the smog.

Finally getting her wish to enroll at Berkeley,

alone at 17, with little English and no friends,

Stranded in the states the day of the revolution,

her father was lost without his factory. Her mother, 

who had never held a job, taking in beadwork 

to earn enough for them to live.

 

She isn’t sleeping these days.

Her older brother, still in Iran, joked to her last week 

that traffic is light in Tehran now that so many people have left.

She mentions the trees she had to abandon 

as if they aren’t the only ones 

without protection in a world turned away

from the possibility of grace.

We’re not close. For now, we wait

within our separate lives for whatever comes 

as if nothing has changed,

now that everything has changed overnight.  

                                               

For nearly 30 years, Carol Boutard farmed a small piece of the Tualatin Valley with her husband, Anthony.  A farming partnership and the animal life migrating through their land were the focus of her book, Each Leaf Singing, published by MoonPath Press in 2021. Carol and Anthony now live in Penn Yan near Upstate New York’s Keuka Lake. Tucked into hardwood forest, their land is often occupied by deer, fox, turkeys and magnificent native marmots.

THE STRANDED CITY

by Iman Oshani

 

 

Tehran skyline at sunset, with the city's iconic Milad Tower rising in the distance, January 2026 —Iran International

 

The smell of gunpowder

lingers for a lifetime.

And in this land,

the snow migrated last year.

Car washes are shut down,

and cars won't move under the weight of ash.

Houses are drained of commotion.

The bedroom.

A large bed.

Sheets neatly made, but gathering dust.

The desk clock faces the wall.

And on the floor,

lies the only corpse: a fly.

The phone will not ring.

The TV is locked on the news.

And behind the window, there is no view...

except

a dog walking by,

sniffing the holes in the buildings.

Iman Oshani is an Iranian writer and poet based in Tehran. His work explores the surreal intersections of memory, objects, and the geography of crisis.

KITES OF TEHRAN

by Peleg Held

"Give me to the wind to take away." 

                                 Reyhaneh Jabbari

Black form, blue thread
at half the weight of man
you're lifted up unwed
from earth and still
they deemed you born
by crane to bear the weight
of laws now hung in taught lines
tethered to the clinging center
where before the dawn
can sing men in from sin
they're led to run and run
with kites in tow, following
upon their heels the faithful's fear
of height and hair, of wing and word
the sweeping trembling defiance
of every wind-ruled thing.


Peleg Held lives in Portland, Maine with his partner and his dog Emitt. There is also the semi-feral cat, Smudge. And a kid or two. He writes poetry, does woodworking and lately, dreams of the summer. pelegheld(at)gmail.com