Seven Revisions to the Garden

i

from -gher (proto-indo-european) meaning
               to grasp. to enclose.

same root as the sanskrit word for house.
               so let’s suggest the body as container, body 
               as garden.

the first blessing of every mother: 
               body become shelter, body, 
               hold her warm, body, i beg,

               do not unclench her,
               body, if you host her zygote, 
               i will forgive you.

amongst eggplants and pomegranate trees 
i grow the stalk of my own mothering.

ii

for now, forget mothering. forget the daughter. 
while forgetting the daughter, forget eve,
               adam unworthy even of forgetting.

forget the cored apple and its cyanidic seeds 
               which was actually a pomegranate anyway.

some biblical scholars believe eden was located in modern day iran, 
though i will never mean adam or eve or eden when i revisit the garden.

iii

it will be suggested that i mention iran earlier. i code-switch easily but 
overlook vital translations. lord, but like adam, i am sick of this naming. 
by lord, i mean my gods, many-breasted. by breast, the daughter, which 
i wanted, but the test returned a single line slim as the stem of an apple.

                                           though, remember—we are forgetting the apple.

iv

                             if any act of honesty requires postscript, if 
                             postscript dilutes the translation,
                             if every translation translates nothing,

                             i’m still telling you a story about the 
                             garden.

v

the only poem i’ve memorized in farsi is this one:

کسی به فکرگلها نیست                          
 کسی به فکرماهیه ها نیست                          
 کسی نمی خواهد                          
بوار کند که باغچه دراد می میرد                          

i’ve spent five years failing forough in translation 
pitying both myself and the dying plants

but how else can i tell you when i garden, i say باغچه
               which sounds so close to بچه, the word for child?

vi

similarly, the american tongue slips to guardian
               which has nothing to do with farsi but everything 
               to do with what i cannot enclose.

example: once a moon, i become a pomegranate 
shed of arils.

my body, neither house nor garden, 
guards nothing.

how am i supposed to translate the daughter when she keeps stepping 
outside the garden?

vii

a truth i guard myself from, this other origin of -gher: 
               to want. to yearn.

as in, when i could only articulate empty flower beds
my yearning encircled me. inside a pomegranate, i picked
her name like an aril. it meant a love so deep it could blossom

even in my fallow body, until i too could join the keening 
of every almost-mother, which precedes any etymology, 
whose voice the grass mimics each time it’s cut.

Read more from Issue 20.1.