How Countries Should Begin

Albania’s prime minister, Edi Rama,

a Catholic, has offered

twenty-seven acres of prime real estate

in his capital, Tirana,

to the Bektashi order

of Sufi Muslims, expelled from Turkey

into diaspora a hundred years

ago.

They’ll have their own domain,

the world’s smallest sovereign state,

smaller than the Vatican.

The important thing, said the prime minister,

crazy or not, is to fight for good.

The Bektashi leader, Baba Mondi,

promised, All decisions will be made with love

and kindness.

When he was eight

my son asked permission

to establish his own country,

one square foot in our back yard.

I’ll call it Peterland, he said.

He marked the boundaries with stakes and string.

With that accomplished, he announced,

The ants and worms don’t need passports,

I’m not out to make money. 

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Steve Nickman's poetry collection To Sleep with Bears is now available from Wordtech (2022). He is a psychiatrist who works mainly with kids, teenagers and young adults. He has a strong interest in the experiences and dilemmas of adoptees and their families, and is working on a book about therapy, The Wound and the Spark. Steve's poetry has recently appeared in Pleiades, Nimrod, Summerset Review, Tar River Review, Tule Review, and JuxtaProse. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts and is a member of Poemworks: The Workshop for Publishing Poets.