The Poetry Corner – 16 March 2021

[To read an introduction to this column, please see the first paragraph of the previous post here]

This week I will simply share two poems from one of my favorite contemporary poets, Solmaz Sharif. Much of her work can be found online, but these two poems feel similar to me and are both striking in many ways. Here they are below:

He, Too

Returning to the US, he asks

my occupation. Teacher.

What do you teach?

Poetry.

I hate poetry, the officer says,

I only like writing

where you can make an argument.

Anything he asks, I must answer.

This he likes, too.

I don’t tell him

he will be in a poem

where the argument will be

anti-American.

I place him here, puffy,

pink, ringed in plexi, pleased

with his own wit

and spittle. Saving the argument

I am let in

I am let in until

Lanat Abad / The Place of the Damned

this mangy plot where

by now

only mothers still come,

only mothers guard the nameless plots

and then sparingly

Peepholes burnt through the metal doors

of their solitary cells,

just large enough

for three fingers to curl out

for a lemon to pass through

for an ear to be held against

for one eye then the other

to regard the hallway

to regard the cell and inmate

peepholes without a lens

so when the guard comes to inspect me,

I inspect him.

Touch me, he said.

And through that opening

I did.