Sample Poems by Shakiba Hashemi

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Rhapsody


let there be music to elevate our congregation
let there be breath to flow through our lungs
and trumpet our song
let our tongues burn from the warmth of our prayer
and our lips pulsate to the beat of our choir
let the sun scorch the blue skin of the sky
let there be flowers
the color of our blood and our desire
let the willow trees rustle in the whistling breeze
let there be silence past the crescendo of our screams
let there be a glow over the pyre of pain
let there be rivers to chant to rhapsody of the rain

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Thus Spoke My Mother


You will find your way out of me one day,
cradled in your amniotic ark;

you will voyage through
this deluge of fluid and foam.

You, little astronaut
hung from your navel cord

floating between worlds, will kick down
my womb’s walls

and claim the space. You,
seahorse turned Pegasus,

unnamed hero, waiting to become.
You will be ripped out of me one day,

your raw flesh heaving in blood,
dripping red footsteps on the ground.

Eyes closed in rapture, with fists clenched,
you will find deliverance, darling,

wrapped in swaddling clothes,
holding your brown-eyed dolls.

You will transcend,
and I will never be this close to you again,

feeling your heartbeats in my core.
You will be cut out of me one day,

like a limb that never belonged.
And not long after you are gone,

I will become merely what you passed through:
a vacant vessel, a poet without a rhyme.

Your life will begin one day,
when I am empty, undone.

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Rising Hymn


Clouds crowd the sky like ghosts
of forgotten gods, sinking lower than ever
just as the burden of truth in a blue dome of lies,
and I question everything.
Are windows openings between the walls?
Or are they the building’s eyes?
Do birds ever get lost between Polaris
and the zodiac signs?
Is the night sky a graveyard
for the stars that died?
Or is it a fantastic celebration of light?
Nothing makes sense,
yet everything has meaning.
Did Jesus walk on water? Or did the ocean tides
rise to his feet? Did he resurrect?
Or did he wake up to observe the spring?
Did the swallow cry when the lightening
flashed through? Is blue
Zeus’s favorite hue?
How can the moon catch up with the earth’s spin,
while hiding from us its other side?

Clouds crowd the sky like ghosts
of forgotten gods—
the apple falls.

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Crossfire


the owls drink the river’s
blood
their beaks froth like the devil’s
mouth
soldiers howl
fight
communion
mass graves
angel
of the night
baptized leaves
float
dragonflies
bite
God is hiding
beneath
the moonstruck eclipse
of moths