In Response to Payam Feili’s poem: Eleven

In Response to Payam Feili’s poem: Eleven

I too blossom

in that languid lake—

grieve

for your words

my poems bowdlerized

beneath

fallen leaves

I mourn

my sitting Shiva

my wild rose

in dark prison cells

where sleeplessness

is at no time

impossible, where spring never

reaches any further than the walls

I despair

for my uncle’s only son

in the cold

season of his naked groin

O, how I despair for his lips on my nape