When I Kneel, I Don’t Think of a God by Farnaz Fatemi
When I Kneel, I Don’t Think of a God
Farnaz FatemiI think of you, and you, and also you,
so long gone, now, I’m not telling your stories,
I don’t invoke you to explain laughter.
I have other beloveds nearby
I watch to learn how to live,
close to the tip of my tongue, like you were.
You do not linger out loud.
You are not in my mouth.But it’s not what you think. Now—
like the idiom I’d only heard, but never
bit into, couldn’t have swallowed—
you are in my liver. No, you are my liver.
That’s what I can say, when I pray:
jigar-e-man, my liver,
teach me what to do now.
MARGINALIA
1.
Have you ever felt anguish linger in your body. Your jaw. Your spine. Lodged behind your shoulder. Or the back of your throat. At the pit of your stomach. Just this mass of something, rearranging your insides. Have you ever felt like time forgot about it.
2.
Have you ever sat with the ghosts of your present and by that I mean: the things you can’t say. Names. Or maybe prayers.
3.
When I read a poem I pray. When I write a poem I pray. I’m not really asking for anything. Mostly I think I am preparing to receive. Whatever comes.
4.
And how do you move differently if it was desire moving through you. Or a fission of fear. Or the embarrassing realisation that you are happy to still be here.
5.
There are days when I want to ask the ones I’ve lost: what do I do with all this love?
6.
Whatever comes.
KEEP READING
SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Sister Tongue by Farnaz Fatemi, published by The Kent State University Press, 2022. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
DESCRIPTION
“The poems in Sister Tongue explore negative spaces―the distance between twin sisters, between lovers, between Farsi and English, between the poet’s upbringing in California and her family in Iran. This space between vibrates with loss and longing, arcing with tension. Farnaz Fatemi’s poetry delves into the intricacies of the relational space between people, the depth of ancestral roots, and the visceral memories that shimmer beyond the reach of words.
Language is one of the origins of the poet’s displacement and the evidence of her non-belonging―in both Farsi- and English-speaking communities. The long lyric essay that makes up the spine of this book plumbs years of wordlessness and a journey of reconciliation, as Fatemi asks how her tongue might be a passport to the otherwise inaccessible territories within a self.
The poems in Sister Tongue metabolize longing while holding space for the poet’s multiple inheritances, offering a vision of a porosity of self. Through the work of this reckoning, Fatemi reveals how connections between people and places might be forged.” (Source)
ABOUT FARNAZ FATEMI
Farnaz Fatemi is the former Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate, an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, California Individual Artist Fellow, and author of the poetry collection, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر, recipient of a Publisher’s Weekly starred review. Her poems and essays appear in Alaska Quarterly, Kenyon Review, No Tokens Journal, Nowruz Journal, RHINO Poetry Journal, Tahoma Literary Review, Terrain.org, and elsewhere. (Source)
Read more poems by Farnaz Fatemi • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Follow on Instagram • Twitter • Facebook • Website • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
- Explore other works in pursuit of: holy • memory • prayers • Or browse the index
- If this work resonates with you, please consider supporting the archive. Thank you for reading.
