Green Linden Press

from The White Plain, VII

“baby boy”
                say:
“remember the schoolyard?

all its quiet whispering
           the cane and hand, arithmetic and geometry
  remember?”

I still scribble your homework for you
still put my hand up for you
and still whatever’s in the desi-air
              the lust for your kiss in class
“baby boy”
my notebook was filled with longing you
your leaving, your not being, your being lost,
      your absence
still your truancy is absent light and breath
“baby boy”
the desi-air without you for me is caged desi-air
“baby boy”
my ear is full of acacia tree screams
my night full of the terror of waterless fish

between my fear  and yours
    the birchedge, whip and punishment
my kingdom come  and yours
    the shariah, law and judgement

“baby boy”
at midnight I leaped from sleep
wind caressed the grasses
wind
           twisted
in this blackboard
your fever, my palm, the moon’s face

wind
           twisting
and howling
night now smelling your shirt

still your hand my prison
still your name in my blood
under my summer sun, my grass
your becoming my drizzle rain

“baby boy,”
    your hand is my prison!

from The White Plain, VIII

“baby boy”
inside the pattern of Isfahan’s tiles
I saw you a while ago

those days you left everywhere
those days I feared everything

but
            now
though …

hand-in-hand with uncle Ali’s son
dawn till dusk you don’t remember us together

that one day
someone
caressed the blue tiles and
                  you came here
like seriously, you don’t remember
from where you came

“baby boy”
a thousand years ago
you were born from this painted lagoon.

from The White Plain, XI

I flower, I grow tall

“baby boy” my body’s rhubarb tender
winter solstice night,
        atop a tall wall
I crash at your longing and you

you under moonlight
in far forests
        on the bedrock of sleeping lakes
you on the stars I see

“baby boy” I drift like you
“baby boy” I’m sad like you;

leaving’s sadness
staying’s sadness

loitering in derelict streets sadness
sadness of the morning newspaper’s arrest
          the sadness of falsely accused books
sadness of Uncle Ali’s only son’s beauty
          wet disheleved sparrow sadness
Evin prison’s dark corridor sadness

          the sadness of Shiva
                          the sadness of Nasrin

deciphering your not sleeping sadness
your loneliness and fearing sadness

tall paper tower sadness
your curly haired bare feet sadness

sadness of winter cold in your body
clamour’s sadness,
      your red lips’ sadness

I flower, I grow tall
“baby boy” my body’s rhubarb tender

one day despite Uncle Ali’s only son’s beauty
in the village streets the last silver string

I’ll cut loose.

(translated from Farsi by George Reiner)
(These poems are from the anthology Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora from Green Linden Press.
In Persian, The White Plain was first published by Nogaam in 2013.)

Payam Feili is an Iranian poet, activist, and writer with eight works published: three collections of poems, Sun Platform, Hasanak, and The White Plain; three novels, Towers and Ponds, I grow green, I bear fruit; Figs, and A planet whose only inhabitants are butterflies; and two collections of short stories, The Purpleness of Purple and The Speech of the Waters. These works are considered a forbidden subject in Iran, but in recent years, and especially outside Iran, they have been welcomed by a Persian-speaking audience. Feili is currently based in Haifa, Israel.

ISSN 2472-338X
© 2021

George Reiner is a poet, translator, and artist based between London and Birmingham, U.K. With Penny Burkett they have published “cruising for lavs” that explored queer relations and experiences in Polari. He was a member of the Birmingham Hippodrome Young Poets and has published his queer break-up translations as part of South London Gallery’s Strange Perfume Queer Book Fair. He is currently working on a short story in Italian, “Di-Ospitare," that explores contemporary forms of hospitality as part of a residency at CasaPiena MicroCentro in Petralia Soprana, Sicily.