Caspian Sea

Once,
she held me 
in her rippling arms,
soft Mother,
breathing her buoyant, 
murmuring life
into my little body.

Her shores stretched
like dark fields of wheat.

When I was nine,
she almost drowned me.

After the revolution,
I was banned from entering
unless 
Fully Clothed.

The IRI’s uniformed men
parted her with a thick black curtain
that ran a hundred meters long: 
a women’s area
bordered by Sharia law.

I remember her
yielding bed, 
tangling kelp stalks, 
brine, filling my mouth

the night 
I said goodbye 
before leaving for America,
as she swept refugee bodies
to her shoreline—
a sea of cold eulogy 
and stone.

Hard years have turned her into
an infinite liquid shroud—
her hunched spines, Russian-seized limbs, 
fuel-drilled organs,
womb of toxic goo.

Will she ever remember
her name?

Originally published in Poetic Sun, an online journal for international poetry, on 26 June 2022.

Artwork by Vivian Hagedorn

Leila Farjami is a poet, literary translator, and psychotherapist. She has published seven poetry books in Persian, and has appeared in Hey, I’m Alive, Nimrod Journal, Poetry Porch, and Saint Ann’s Review. Farjami was also published by Tupelo Press for their 30/30 Project. Her works have been translated into Swedish, Arabic, Turkish, and French. She studies poetry with Rachel Kann, enjoys translating sacred poetry by Rumi into English, and has translated a comprehensive volume of Sylvia Plath’s poetry into Persian.

Vivian Hagedorn was born in Germany and studied fine arts from 2007-2015.