Amee Nassrene Broumand
Sunlight taunts the green, creeping over cold brick.
They say there are deserts; all I know
is fernhued, wet
& full of rot & moss,
throttling the sparrow’s throat.
Boughs sweep the earth, rainheavy
& tangled in a tulipbulb haze.
Nest of dead wishes—
eyelashes
litter the rainlit floors.
Even humdrum stones have an underbelly.
Iris roots break under our pattering footfall,
pooling in foul bogs; an ibis glides into the foglight.
One eye becomes another.
Wanted: a camera for inner sights—
cinema of the night, of the spellbound
—to prove my hall of ghosts.
Tears ride the press of water, the heaving wave.
I’ve become a spider
no bigger than a pin, leaping onwards
to chase will-o’-the-wisps & dragonflies
until I confront the sea
pigheaded & deadsmiling
in her crown of teeth.
***
Amee Nassrene Broumand is an Iranian-American poet from the Pacific Northwest. Nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, her work has appeared in FIVE: 2:ONE, Sundog Lit, The Ginger Collect, Empty Mirror, Menacing Hedge, Barren Magazine, & elsewhere. She served as the March 2018 Guest Editor for Burning House Press. Find her on Twitter @AmeeBroumand.