Repetition Practice

1 Minute Read Time

This photograph shows an airplane through several glass panes at an airport. The photograph is a mixture of blue and gray. — Photo by Jessica Christian on Unsplash

With the fall of rain across the lands

Had enough of the sea
 
And seasons had enough

The wheelchair and seasons came inside
 
Then sirens and closed airports

The wheelchair came inside sat with us 

As a guest of rain without shoes
 
Then sirens sat with us

In Persian without shoes
 
At the gate up ahead 

Envelopes called her name

Everything left behind a horizon

It was time up ahead
 
Tucked the night in a bed
 
Plugged in sheets with a pump
 
And the closed airports of spring
 
As a guest the end came

In Persian fluorescence the end came
 
Called her name   Fluorescence of the Sea
 
Tucked the night   enveloped everything

It was time of spring
 
To be seen in a bed plaited hair
 
With a pump to be seen
 
Plugged in sheets like a noun

Colorless plaited hair without verbs

Someone else
 
Colorless like a noun

Left behind without verbs
 
A Gharib at the gate

Someone else   a horizon

And she left a gharib across the lands

And she left with the fall

And she

Kaveh Bassiri

is an Iranian-American writer and translator, who was born in Tehran and came to United States as a teenager. He is the author of two chapbooks, 99 Names of Exile (2019), winner of the Anzaldúa Poetry Prize, and Elementary English (2020), winner of Rick Campbell Chapbook Prize. Bassiri is the recipient of a 2022-2023 Tulsa Artist Fellowship, 2021 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Arkansas Arts Council, 2020 Artist 360 Grant sponsored by the Mid-America Arts Alliance, and the Bellingham Review’s 49th Parallel Award. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in a number of anthologies and textbooks, including Best American Poetry 2020, Best New Poets 2020, The Heart of a Stranger (2020), Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora (2021), Somewhere We Are Human (2022), A Poetry Pedagogy for Teachers (2022), and Without a Doubt (2023). They can also be found in Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Virginia Quarterly Review, Copper Nickel, Beloit Poetry Journal, Poetry Northwest, Nimrod International Journal, The Cincinnati Review, and Shenandoah.

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