<p style="text-align: justify;">Set the warriors to sea in a ship stacked with shields, layers of swords, mountains of gold. Lay them out with their wife. With their child. Lay them out with their livestock, with the whole farm. The rain is not coming here. Not today. For today the gods welcome one of their own back home. So set the hero out on the soft waves that will carry him to the other side of the pink ether where he will float on fire until the ash consumes him like the mighty warrior he once was and like the legend he will become. The flames will dance over his possessions, his goblets and arrows, his blankets, his paintings, his passions. The flames will dance across his flesh like the soft fingers of the soft lover he left, and as he sleeps this last sleep, the fires will eat him away, the heat will write his skin across the night sky to join the constellations that will guide the sailors at storm, the herders lost in the clouds, they will all come home by facing the direction his eyes are facing. The heavens are filled with smoke. This is history this is legend this is what we once were. Where the stories come from, what we are. When you fall in battle, they will take your body with the life you made in this world and set it off to sail behind you into the next, so that you will stay a king, remain forever the golden being you breathed as on this side of the mountain. When you pass, may your life follow you like a shadow into the light. When I go, bury me with nothing but my own skin. I spent far too many days trying to outrun this thing called mine, so if I set myself into your arms would you hold me like the earth, quietly? I am yours. Give me a field, give me a big sky. A mountain. Give me your mouth. I’m just looking for a quiet place that I could die inside of.</p><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/MojganiCradle.mp3"></audio></figure>

Ants

The Pool

Cradle

<div class="line">I do not always have the right thing to say</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">my foot sometimes moves without me</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">a wing of my library is filled</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">with only the knocking of one cuckoo clock</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">and the voices of yellow flowers</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">a path of empty vases follows us</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">somewhere in my body</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">small memories</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">fold newspapers by the thousands</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">turning them into small squares</div>


I Want to Love the World

To My Son on September 15th

Somewhere in My Body Are Two Flowers for the Same Person

<div class="line">gentlemen have you forgotten your god?</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">He weeps out loud</div>
<div class="line">waiting for our dreams to grow like ears</div>
<div class="line">while you are making ghosts out of people</div>
<div class="line">making ghosts from your torah</div>
<div class="line">your koran</div>
<div class="line">your bibles</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">we have shaved our books down</div>
<div class="line">swallowed them</div>
<div class="line">so that the word of God</div>
<div class="line">might flow through us</div>
<div class="line">but the pages just sit in our bellies</div>
<div class="line">speaking to us in dull murmurs as we sleep</div>
<div class="line">we wonder <em>what to do</em></div>
<div class="line">make me understand</div>
<div class="line">we wish to become one with our Lord</div>
<div class="line">we hear the voices and think we know what they say</div>
<div class="line"><em>this</em></div>
<div class="line">is the word of God</div>
<div class="line">i hear this i heard this correctly</div>
<div class="line">so we rise and try to translate this word</div>
<div class="line">with the work</div>
<div class="line">with the heart</div>
<div class="line">we search the bed</div>
<div class="line">through thighs</div>
<div class="line">the blanket the leg the needle twist</div>
<div class="line">fuck and the fuck you</div>
<div class="line">curse of the moon</div>
<div class="line">to find our Lord</div>
<div class="line">and listen more proper-like</div>
<div class="line">but our ears are too small</div>
<div class="line">for our hearts to understand the humming of these sentences inside of us</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">we are trying to decipher the bang buck braille of Your silent throat Lord</div>
<div class="line">but the voices grow and grow just as fuzzy</div>
<div class="line">so we stand and go to the kitchen</div>
<div class="line">and pick up knives to cut these voices out from inside</div>
<div class="line">we stab ourselves</div>
<div class="line">i must hear You</div>
<div class="line">cutting the flap of our skins</div>
<div class="line">the words twist on the floor of our homes</div>
<div class="line">mixing their sounds with our blood</div>
<div class="line">they drown</div>
<div class="line">but it does not stop</div>
<div class="line"><em>i must hear you</em></div>
<div class="line">we hear the same songs singing in the stomachs of others</div>
<div class="line">so we grab more knives to cut those out</div>
<div class="line">but there are more and more stomachs</div>
<div class="line">—we need</div>
<div class="line">bigger knives</div>
<div class="line">we need soldiers tanks and missiles</div>
<div class="line">but we still cannot make out the words</div>
<div class="line">we need dead mothers</div>
<div class="line">and children raped from searching</div>
<div class="line">the hospitals are full and overflowing</div>
<div class="line">from us trying to cut our God from our gut</div>
<div class="line">with the blade the pipe</div>
<div class="line">the fingernail twist of the drug</div>
<div class="line">pushed and poked through the arm to the belly</div>
<div class="line">to throw Him up</div>
<div class="line">in the bang of the scream</div>
<div class="line">we find our savior</div>
<div class="line">the shell in the chamber</div>
<div class="line">is a quiet plea to a distant God</div>
<div class="line">asking for us to be remembered by Him</div>
<div class="line">through the tire tread</div>
<div class="line">through the smoke of the tank</div>
<div class="line">the crunch of the skull</div>
<div class="line">through the babies we bury beneath us</div>
<div class="line">we empty their tiny limbs to see if a scrap of our Lord still lingered</div>
<div class="line">somewhere inside there</div>
<div class="line">we clutch throats pistols and palms in the same two handed clasp of prayer</div>
<div class="line">staring into the mirror</div>
<div class="line">we see crypts</div>
<div class="line">fondling the marble of our hearts like they were mausoleums</div>
<div class="line">we are ghosts hungry</div>
<div class="line">for something bigger then what our mouths are kissing</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">let me see You</div>
<div class="line">let me see You Lord</div>
<div class="line">i have balanced in the middle of the question</div>
<div class="line">black as my eye</div>
<div class="line">beaten by Your hymn</div>
<div class="line">i am holding still</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">so</div>
<div class="line">go ahead</div>
<div class="line">you gentle</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">men of God</div>
<div class="line">you tender sinners</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">take your rifles</div>
<div class="line">raise to my gut and fire on</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">hear the song more clearly</div>
<div class="line">it does not sing what you wish it did</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">it is too big for us to see a letter of it</div>
<div class="line">so do not even try</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">cut Him from me</div>
<div> </div>
<div class="line">i wish to drape His face with my kisses</div>
<div class="line">and finally sleep softly</div><figure class="wp-block-audio"><audio controls src="https://admin.rattle.com/audio/MojganiBranches.mp3"></audio></figure>

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April 23, 2022Somewhere in My Body Are Two Flowers for the Same PersonAnis Mojgani

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April 23, 2022Somewhere in My Body Are Two Flowers for the Same PersonAnis Mojgani

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