My soul belongs to nowhere any more
I am like a loose leaf
Traveling headless
Cave
I live in this big cage
Big and beautiful
Wired with security
Covered with tall rough fence
Enclosed with tall locked doors
Where neighbors are strange
I live in this city where
Fear is hidden everywhere
Fear of police
Fear of neighbors
Fear of loose sex offenders
Fear of a gun in everyone’s hand
Fear of Sunday school teacher
Fear of virus
Fear of terrorists we created
Fear of losing
Fear of loss
Fear everywhere
We are still looking for a place
Where we feel at home
A place where we can leave the doors opens
To the aroma of spring
Leave the windows open
To the music of birds
To the music of rain drops
Where we can
Breathe fresh air
And stretch our legs
Where we can trust police
Trust the city
Trust the wind
My soul belongs to nowhere any more
I am like a loose leaf
Traveling headless
I am tired of punching security codes
When I sleep at night
When I leave my house every day
I am not used to living in a big cage where
Any time I turn the TV on
Someone murdered, someone died, someone raped
Someone became an overnight millionaire
And Iraq again had another tragic day
And there was another hanging in Tehran
And more hunger in one more place
Oh I am looking for a place away from my cage
And I am asking you
Do you know how much is the foreclosure price of a cave ?
SF/5/2009
——
Mahnaz Badihian (Oba) is a poet and translator whose work has been published into several languages worldwide, including Persian, Turkish, and Malayalam. She attended the Iowa Writer’s workshop with a focus on international poetry while practicing as a dentist in Iowa City. Her publications include two volumes of poetry in Persian and a best-selling translation of Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions into Persian. Her most recent publication is a critically acclaimed book of original English language poetry, From Zayandeh Rud to the Mississippi. She has an awarding winning selection of poetry (XIV Premio Letterario Internazionale Trofeo Penna d’Autore, Tornio) translated into Italian by Cristina Contili and Pirooz Ebrahimi. Currently she resides in Northern California where she runs an online multilingual literary magazine, MahMag.org in an effort to bring the poetry of the world together. She presented a paper on erotic literature by Iranian women in the Diaspora at the American Comparative Literature Association’s 2008 annual conference. She is a MFA candidate in poetry from Pacific University. A selection of her poems translated by Andrés Alfaro into Spanish will be published in 2009. She is currently working on a novel called” Like a Wedding Dress”.