style="font-size:15px;"> Hear my prayer, and grant me this sin. Amen.
I heard the great poets of Shiraz sing
Through olive vein-lines of her Persian skin.
I know; this ghazal objectifies her,
Ignoring feminist criticism.
Reversing the Cinderella story,
She turns all princes into cindermen.
“Your next patient, Doctor. It’s Roger S.”
“The one lovesick for his wife? Send him in.”
Ghazal Game #2: Pin the Tail on the Middle Eastern Donkey
By spinning yourself you’ll spin the donkey.
Sufis teach us how to pin the donkey.
At school in Cairo, we watched where we stepped.
(The groundskeeper didn’t pen the donkey.)
“Yalla, y’hmar!” yelled at a slow driver
In an attempt to quicken the donkey.
It’s all connected. One wrestles within
To change the real world and pin the donkey.
The butterflies have all been cataloged.
Hapless scientists just pin the donkey.
Can’t understand this game? Stop thinking. Close
Your sense of self and open the donkey.
“Hey, poet, we’re literal! We came here
With blindfolds and tacks to pin the donkey.”
Let’s say you hit the target. What’s the point?
It’s not like you really win the donkey.
A live sex act too freaky to recount
Traumatized me, the woman, the donkey . . .
If Lennon was the Walrus, I’m at best
The camel, maybe even the donkey.
Inverted Ghazal
for David Lehman
A mirror fuses false appearances;
(A mere few things in this world become one).
Amir, who drove me to Persepolis,
Insisted we speak English on the way.
A mirror used to translate a language
(i.e., dictionary) will get broken.
Ah, mirror! Who’s the fairest of them all,
Since radiant Marzieh stopped singing?
A mirror: Urdu/Persian (vice/versa);
It figures Ghalib liked to read Hafez.
A Mir who married an old Khavari
Begat my great-great-grandmother Ezzat.
A mirror to a mirror back-talks twice,
Flips meaning upside down, then right again.
Am I reared rude enough in the U.S.
To violate the sacred ghazal form?
A mirrored blue sea/sky in Genesis
Revealed the first rhyme of dichotomies.
A) Mirror–2 B) God–1 C) –o.
Which of the above matches your being?
You:I, or me:Him (the eternal split
Of object and subject in poetry).
The Persian Poet’s Recipe for Qormeh Sabzi
Quick! Hide this ghazal deep in your Qur’an.
(Terrorists don’t understand the Qur’an.)
Would you eschew convention? Follow these
Lines to a place where truth, at its core, can
Enjamb ghazal couplets, proclaim an end
To Ramadan, and dine on the Qur’an.
Stew meat, spinach, onion, parsely, tareh,
Fenugreek, black-eyed peas, peppercorn and . . .
I know; I shouldn’t be making this. Not
The food, this ghazal game of the Qur’an.
Call me Cat in the Hat or Gorbeigh dar
Sabzi (cat in the stew) or a whore and
A hack, subverter of sacred causes.
Sentenced to sentences in the Qur’an,
I will surrender, eat the dish I’ve made,
Recite the ghazal hid in the Qur’an.
(I didn’t try to write it, the words came
The way the prophet transcribed the Qur’an.)
Pure agency, I arrive in Mecca
Both here and there: the world is my Qur’an.
Oh, Hallaj, your blaspheming the Qur’an
Affirms your close reading of the Qur’an.
Ghazal Game #3: True or False
(Put a “T” next to all statements that are correct and an “F” next to those you consider false)
___ Eyes are windows. Breaking them hurts the soul.
The blindly devout monk shuttered the soul.
___ On Rita Dove’s “Seven Pool Players’” graves,
This line’s inscribed in blood: “We lurk the soul.”
___ Not even Wall Street bonuses before
The crash
