Farnoosh Fathi

Factory came down, 2pm, on a sigh
She wrote contra – country – clocking in.
Only sea
comes to the table now, drops
the wig of a gull on each lap, and null
into the table is scratched like a bottom in a pew.
The bald in the beret offers up her nest –
To burp and harp and attribute so little to myself!
Riding like a joke
around which pages are flapping wildly –
to the highest point of my interest – to the ball of the bald.
A crowd explodes from the vulture–
It swings to me, on purple floss, screaming
Marigolds and their drugs behind an ear
One must intend – but my eternity
is something else – too emotional, too alone with possibility –
jugging the eau d’lol, forgetting to say anything,
forgetting the birthright of every poem, right here – that birth is inevitable.

Taut Rope Alley

In the whiskered foray
of a clown a pearl sprout on the chin.
Now we are taut to examine GAIT, the alley test of temperament –
from the kneetops, twins stopping in the eyes of many shout
It will be “wide enough for two in love” –
twisting w/ holly out of intestinal pleasantries
And lips curled like the sea’s.
I am coming through the middle now, on the pietà spine, to leap the scalp of father to
mother,
of heaven above and below.
A nerve floods the goodhand pecked and stopped by a child of boils, crossed eyes
aspiring, all ways, alley-all.
The sun in a jumbo marshmallow rises:
“Tinteretto is baking,
his nostrils glow.”

Farnoosh Fathi

Farnoosh Fathi is the author of Great Guns (Canarium, 2013), editor of Joan Murray: Drafts, Fragments, and Poems (NYRB Poets, 2017) and founder of the Young Artists Language and Devotion Alliance (YALDA). She lives and teaches in New York City, most recently at The Poetry Project, Poets House and Columbia University.