We Listened to Stevie Nicks
It was war, and we listened to Stevie Nicks.
In the dark, in the aftershocks of silence, we listened.
When the lights came back, when the hum returned,
we listened
to Stevie and the moon cracked wide.
Some of us never left the house for shelters,
rooted by more than fear,
it was the weight, was it not?
The weight of the cold night pressing down,
the weight of leaving, of packing your whole life,
breath by breath, into a bag.
It was easier to sit in the ruin,
easier to swallow the stones of fear,
to bear the weight of it all,
the truth was like a blade
to the gut.
Dreams turned to ash,
and the sorrow.
We stayed, waiting for the rockets to hit,
for the bombs to fall,
waiting for the blood, the night, the fear to be over.
We waited for the sirens to fade,
for electricity to return to our homes,
and we waited for the sound of Stevie Nicks
casting her spell in the dark,
telling us the weight of destiny
was the weight of our dreams,
the weight of a song.
Bombs and Breath
The dull thud of bombs
Different from the rockets.
Their sound sliced the air with surgical precision.
We were always dressed for death,
And death required no dressing up.
Still, we dressed,
Danced at parties,
Waiting for the warplanes
Or the tight, unforgiving handcuffs,
For defying the regime’s repressive rules.
Damned either way.
We were damned either way,
Kissed by the cold mouth of fate,
Sucking the breath from our lungs.
Sheema Kalbasi is an Iranian American poet, humanitarian, and historian. Her work explores feminism, war, exile, refugees, and human rights. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, has received a United Nations humanitarian award, and has received grants from the Netherlands’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Her books include Echoes in Exile (PRA Publishing, USA, 2006) and Spoon and Shrapnel: Verse and Wartime Recipes (Daraja Press, Canada, 2024). Her poetry has appeared in The Kenyon Review, been featured by PEN America and NPR, been anthologized and translated into more than twenty languages, adapted into short films, set to music, and presented in venues such as the Smithsonian National Museum, the Tribute World Trade Center in New York, and the Canadian Parliament. Her poem “Refuge” was selected for publication in the 2026 Pushcart Prize Anthology.