For Mahnaz Badihan, poeta / by Neeli Cherkovski
I SEE MANY ROOTS
For Mahnaz Badihan, poeta
many roots crack stone
on Persian meadows
where you abide
you awaken on the shoulder
of a mountain
crowded in snow
thinking of the bees
and dying light
pine twisted, sacred hatred
lost on the snow banks
this is Iran as I
dream it from photograms
in your poems, these are transit zones
through the art of poesy
your mother calls
your daughters smile
your husband waits
a son comes home
a grandmother sits stoically
no one would dare
put your stanzas in a cage
or expect you to be patient
you look from dawn
into wily ribbons
of a moving mass of people
trees grow out of your hands
drummers spend their night
in desire’s radiant nest
you are a daughter of Jalal al-Din Rumi
in the rose garden, in the jamine poem
in the poem of love and war, in the eyes
in jagged fields of meadowlark
endurance burns into completeness
on rugged edges of the sun
Neeli Cherkovski
Jan 25, 2015
Bonifacai Global City
The Philippines
…..
Born in Santa Monica, California, Cherkovski grew up in San Bernardino, California. In the 1970s he was a political consultant in the Riverside area, who came to San Francisco to work on the staff of then-State Senator George Moscone. Cherkovski has written biographies of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bob Kaufman, and Charles Bukowski,[1] with whom he co-edited the Los Angeles zine Laugh Literary and Man the Humping Guns..[2] Cherkovski produced the first San Francisco Poetry Festival, and in the early-1990s helped to found Café Arts Month, a yearly event celebrating San Francisco’s cafe culture.
………
Mahnaz Badihian
Poet, Painter….
Badihian.org
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