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SOT


The non-profit in which I am employed has a department

called Survivors of Torture. My colleague

in Supply Chain actually applied to transfer there. She

must have had a very different life

than I. She is a quiet woman though,

so I never learned her background. And now

(I am a coward)

I hope I never will.

 

Begin Again


As I was coming home this evening I noticed my relative,

She stood in thin silence under the jacaranda tree

That is one of many jacarandas in this area.

I mistakenly thought her to be a first cousin on my father’s side

But as I approached and she did not move

I saw she was actually a more distant cousin, though still from my father’s side

She raised her arm in greeting only

I was then close enough to see the knots of hair she could no longer brush out

Or had stopped trying to

Her clothes were unclean as well,

And her feet poorly covered by house slippers.

I wondered if she would beg for lodging, or money, or mercy

She stared at me a long time, her breath moving in shallow waves

Finally she told me she was moving her children away

To a place she heard would not have subpar education and a corrupt governor

And since her children would be properly educated, they would recognize corruption

She did not ask me for anything, instead, she offered me blessings

Though it should have been me offering this to her for her journey

After she left I remained, under the jacaranda tree.

 

Taliban Dreams


It is incorrect to express this in English yet

My heart is holding Farsi tightly not

Releasing it to my tongue and

Unlike them and their flag, I

Will not be reduced to exclusion, plus

The occupation birthed many interpreters including one

Whom I married. I see

Taliban in my dreams. They are

Holding a rake, an axe, a hoe, while speaking

To Agha Sir Sultan Lt General. He disperses

Farming equipment and seed. His

Back turned, they pick up their

Gun which was there always. My family is

Next to the blue lake, it offers colors

More intense than the Caribbean. Our wedding

Would have been here. In my dreams the Buddhas

Remain deprived of their heads. Do not soothe me and say it

Is only a nightmare. We have knocked on the door of

Other countries. The landscape bristles with limes.

 

Lisa Sultani earned her MA in Library and Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin- Madison. She now lives deep in America’s Bible Belt. She has carefully guarded her writing until recently, and has a publication in the Delta Poetry Review.

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