Kind Conditions
for Stephanie
Over & over this image in my dreams: an axe slices
thru the air I’m belly down
my lips the color of cherries dazzling snowflakes
decorate my eye lashes still I can see the axe
fall onto powdery glistening snow
hitch its metal arc in frozen dirt I’m warm
covered in fur-trimmed puffy coat I’m safe
sticking out my tongue to catch the kind of snow
that comes down only in certain parts of the world under the just right
conditions
& finally today I woke & wondered:
who would we be if we had the just right conditions?
Hold her up the baby likes to take in the world from your shoulder
Moondrop grapes are her favorite
Keep the door cracked at night he’s still a wee bit afraid
of the dark aren’t we all
Elementary Graduation
My white mother’s hissing
in my ear, pinching my arm.
Around me: tight-lipped
women. I learned their rules
eventually, surely & sorely.
Digging thru old photos
shows me I was a little
girl like any other, really.
How funny the teachers found
this loud-mouthed dark-haired
child w/ the weird name. I craved
approval, the smiling nods so freely
given to mediocrity, & at best doled
out in teaspoons to the likes of me.
I wonder now how a world
that welcomed me would look—
one w/o such class
room violence. If I’m foreign,
what are they? Limited.
See me now: I’m scraping
assimilated normalization
from my mind, scrubbing
those chalk boards squeaky clean.
I architect my universe, invite
in the precious beings I aim
to protect. I’m tapping
my acrylics, I’m out of patience
for the bland teeth of American
veneer. It’s girls like me for whom
I lift my arm to wave, to welcome,
to say: Beautiful ones, come closer.
Don’t be a stranger.
Sarah E. Azizi (aka Sera Miles) is a queer Iranian-American writer, educator, and activist. Previous and forthcoming publications include: $pread Magazine, 34th Parallel, Blue Mesa Review, Fahmidan Journal, Clean Sheets, red, The Tide Rises, HELD, Wrongdoing Magazine, the winnow, Superpresent, Nine Mile, and Free State Review. She lives in Albuquerque.
Guest Editor Hyejung Kook’s poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine, Denver Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Pleiades, and elsewhere. Other works include an essay in Critical Flame and a chamber opera libretto. Born in Seoul, Korea, she now lives in Kansas with her husband and their two children. Learn more at her website.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 