Painting by Lucy Bucknall is based on my poem "For Women of Afghanistan". The poem was written and first published during the Taliban’s rule. ~Sheema Kalbasi
Selection from Sheema's poetry
5.7
I don't care if you are you and I am I. I am not some exotic flower. Whatever coat you have on, I will put it on to warm me... and the shoes however small... I will walk in them to balance our height difference. You don't need to convert for me; I have already converted to you. You see I never had a religion to begin with. I was born naked from all religions but your love.
I know that was not the point. I know there is no conversion. There is no coat, no balance, no shoes but the naked truth of me finding you first, not you finding me. You, whom will never know who I was when I was sitting on the white sheets.
Y o u, not b e s i d e m e.
And the words that are already written. The words that are already said, are already felt, and are already gone.
And I try to take them back into my empty bowl of hands. To put my hands on the chest. The chest into rest. The rest in to the heart. The beat back to the soul. The soul, back to what it was before you.
Alas! I am 5.7
Sheema Kalbasi, 2004
Published in print and online the poem has been presented in many projects including Get Lit classic slams and curriculum for educators.
THE PASSENGER
The festive occasion of a fancy luncheon,
A bat mitzvah, or a gridlocked traffic in NY
Where I go through the motions and emotions
Of having dignity in the middle of an organized chaos
Emboldening my body. It reminds me of
A train with loads of passengers
Where women sing
And whirl, only to return and to resume
The magical beat of music
With the sound of bangles and gold bands chiming
On their arms and anklets,
Toe rings and ghungaroo jingle bells
Fastened to their ankles,
Shaved scalp children
Running on top of the luggage racks,
The hard bench seats, hunger, thirst, exhaustion
And the uncertainty of the future at fourteen.
Now, many years have passed
While I maintain the high standard of punctuality In America, my home away from home.
Sheema Kalbasi, 2008
Selected and performed at Tribute World Trade Center, NY, by invitation
Festival of Contemporary Immigration Writing, NJ, by invitation
Hezbollah
It is absurd to close your eyes
and pretend that the Bahá'ís
have never been slaughtered or forced
to convert to Islam,
as if the executions of political prisoners
or the Kurds were just part of a game,
an unwritten law in a lawless land.
Extended customs, mute prayers,
grave to grave, Tehran cemeteries
black from the flesh of the youth
and on the faces of the mothers lay
chipped beliefs and spreading tears.
The News shows the Godzilla regime
-mourning over the tassels of demolished
homes of the homeless in a country
not even close to my land- sits on tinplates
of power and announces another castration.
This perhaps is a blessing from God
that when there is a Friday Prayer in Tehran,
we still cry over the Arab-Israeli War.
Sheema Kalbasi, 2004
In 2012, LGen the Hon. Roméo Dallaire, Senator from Quebec, Canada, closed his speech on the situation in Iran with sections from this poem. A winner of Harvest International, the poem has also been anthologized and published amongst others in The Forbidden: Poems from Iran and its Exiles, The Atlanta Review, IRAN issue, and Iranian and Diasporic Literature in the 21st Century: A Critical Study by Dr. Daniel Grassian.
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Mama in the War
Mother! Underneath the stairwell we learned to celebrate
The New Year, your birthday, my childhood
Like a scene from a black and white movie
We laughed nervously with thoughts of
Our melting flesh, the cake on the kitchen table,
And cockroaches that flew on four wings!
Sheema Kalbasi, 1998 Published in print and online, the poem has two versions and has been taught in colleges and high school classrooms around the world, including Israel, India, and UK.
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Dancing Tango
Oh, Orlando!
Remember the night we danced
quietly on the sands where music
was played? Your words were
wonderers, said quietly
in the pockets of my ears.
Oh, Esphahan!
With your turquoise blue mosques
and lovers hiding under the sands
by the Zayandehrood and its haunting
blue skies. Still the words did
wonders when they were said quietly
in the pockets of my ears.
Time is eternity, my dignity
resides in yours and your
words are wonders that I count
as precious coins kept quietly
in the pockets of my tears.
Sheema Kalbasi
This poem was set to music as an artsong for mezzo-soprano and piano and performed at Old Dominion University, Virgina, U.S.A.