Do You Speak Persian?
There was once an entire species of armored worms until
there wasn’t. I couldn’t pronounce their names so I loved them
instead. Often I switch past and present. I will will them
back: they were extinct. Bibi says I speak
bookish. My mother spoke like a school-
girl. I speak it yes, I do, but I don’t know it. I feel
dusty. At the dentist someone opens me
up, someone else’s breath in my mouth. I hate these
modern languages fluent in their
changing—changing without me, ebbing, flowing, big as a moon,
a sea. After all, how many ways could there possibly be
to say thank you. I feel
at home there. I feel all this knowing
shifting like fig leaves in her mouth, swearing at
the gardener’s whore of a sister. Once you learn
Persian other languages you learn easily. I’m not sure
I want to learn anything anymore.
Better Persian
I.
I’m worrying about how I don’t know much when Bibi
tells me I speak better Persian than my mother’s. But
this can’t be. My mother was that other country
fluent in everything, all its harbors, mountains, deserts put
to sleep by her soliloquy. Her body ribboned with
color, euphonious dress of a dancer, great warrior
hero sure-stepping into battle. Was the froth
of a river or a curling snow-storm in the Zagros
the spine that bore that weight. Was an orator of the souls
of that other country, singing moosh bokhoradet
you are so cute a mouse eats you! fluent in the phrases
of the mother tongue. Was a marionette crow
soaring across all the landmarks I know, was the stuff
of legend. Wasn’t she? Sailing the better Persian Gulf.
II.
Wasn’t she? After all these years, I can’t help but believe
in her fluency. Like an infant uncertain of the sky
in its mouth, turning, crawling back. There were times
when I wished to travel so badly, so desperately,
and Bibi would say, already turning away, you have
in your mama’s belly. And I’d rack my memory,
I still do, for the sight and the smell, the taste of that sky
in her belly, my mother’s belly, holding her sleeve
as we walked that earth together, pointing out here
or there a famous king buried, kicking, breathing in his
limestone womb, umbilical shuddering the wind like
a kite or a small silvering animal as we go. My
mother leading me by the hand as she preaches
in better Persian directions for how to get there.
Darius Atefat-Peckham is an Iranian-American poet and essayist. His work has appeared in Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Texas Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Brevity, Crab Orchard Review, and elsewhere. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including My Shadow is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora (University of Texas Press). Atefat-Peckham lives in Huntington, West Virginia and studies Creative Writing at Harvard College.