Moe’s Skin pt II

CiCi Suen, Pansy (2021)
Image description: A mixed-media drawing of the upper half of a statue, partially hidden behind some shrubbery. The statue is sketched loosely in pencil while the leaves surrounding it are in bluish-green and dark purple hues. 

Moe’s Skin pt II
By Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi

wrote to write you
like that black tie smile
            for the girls
(got the girls)
boy who denied himself
a boyhood     

your day unfolds as bleak
as another
            sun      set 
a world                  reshuffling

 loved you /
loved youNOT
this/
cold night
barefoot           on marble
wine in coffee-cup
jazz-struck
lurking in fragments
memories
in blue-silhouette 

good cop/bad cop lovers
“NO”   sorry forgot
the Heat soundtrack 
            wind
            in beer stench teeth
            gnashing
            and
            withdrew

boy who forgot he was a boy
(hope
you kiss
a stranger
find lost years
in belly button fluff)

you:
          the walking masculine
I couldn’t        (should’ve)
but the CRT TV reflection
showed a boy undressing
stretching hands to reach…
and I whip my head around
no limbs reaching to fill
            softly

 (fill the lack you feel:
post midnight motto of mine)

to think…
so much not knowing

          sunrise in your eyes

                          /| wished

                          //|an entir

                        ////|e city w

                      //////|ould  re

                    ////////| shuffle

                  //////////| buildin

                ////////////|gs move

              just to shade you

CiCi Suen, 2021.1 (2021)
Image description: A white shapeless orb floating through the dark surroundings of a forest. The trees surrounding the orb are depicted in dark green and maroon hues. 

Two Translations from Farsi

Translator’s Note:
To Iranians, free verse and contemporary poetry are synonymous with the name Nima Youshij since in Farsi the very term coined for free verse was Nima verse in honor of his colossal feat of standing against century upon century of ghazals, mathnavis, and several other forms of Persian poetry in order to create a contemporary poetry with his background in French poetics. Though Nima Youshij is perhaps the greatest contemporary figure in Persian poetry, not much of his work is translated, and not much is translated well. I have approached translating his incredibly dense and culturally complex poetry mostly through a semi-agglutinative linguistic approach similar to certain translations of Paul Celan, whose poetry was pivotal to me in unlocking the translation of Nima Youshij.

Woe is me
By Nima Youshij

my farmland dried out
and the constant barrage 
of the contrived...
            useless
       fruitless
the slender crevice of my house
pierced by the enemy’s cunning gaze
                                    woe is me! 
           prepared for the heart’s sake:
                       arrows poisoned by a grudge

                        upon blood-smeared roads then/
                          beheaded corpses
                                   dusted
                        with ancestry-plated graves
                        removes from my walls
                       and places upon the soil
            and from the hurt of the sorrowful
            sits upon the heads plucked
            narrates the story of sorrow.

                                    woe is me!
                        in a night as dark as this
                        who shall trample 
                                    -unknowingly-
                        upon these heads
                        still shifting?
            when shall silence break in this heavy night
            from heads whose move and shake
            weaves with enchantment each moment?
                        when shall a star
                        -liberated from the earth’s corruption-
                        lend light to this dark-hearted night!

                        Passersby!
                        O Passersby!
            tread my path. without thought my enemy arrives
            slams me against the door, asks me names and addresses
                                    woe is me!

            upon which corner of this night shall I hang my ragged clothes?
            so I can remove poisonous arrows from this sorrowful heart, bloodied?
                                    woe is me!

CiCi Suen, Garden with Statue (2022)
Image description: A mixed-media drawing of a statue in a garden. The statue, with one hand slightly raised, is partially hidden behind a barren tree and surrounded by some overgrown dark bluish-green shrubbery. The statue is slightly out of focus, and we are unable to see any of its features. 

Me. Alone.
By Nima Youshij

                  amidst pine trees
                  a sparse fringe atop the mountain range ahead
                  my figure divorced from me                          how silver-sown
                  and I                        the vagabond of this dark night
                                    his eyes                   watchful in tears
                                                                        from afar

                                    mounted on a giant’s hair
                  but perhaps I have found a way
                  as I hand-walk along this darkness

                    a sinkhole          a candle
                  and as if sharpened rock
                  I fall in the maw of the giant
                     and under its teeth:
                     sit in exhaustion
                     no path ahead
                          just me
                  sat at the pathway
                  in this dark night

                  the Peganum branches quake
               and the wind       dragon-like
                                    slithering
                     meets in this darkness
                  the beclouded facade of an island
                    secluded at the warm heart 
                                   of the nearby village      

                  oblivious to all
                  villagers sleep
                  something diminishes
                 amidst all the diminished            

                 Hey People!
                 who has heard of him?               

was it perhaps that an unknown rider passed
whose white steed galloped atop the stony creek
                  fed by the village’s water source?

in Willow-dale he unmounted for a drink
glanced at me, and his smile blossomed
and in that moment we spoke
                  though- moonrider he-
spoke no more              

                  that lone ranger came and passed
                                   lost
                            did he seek the Hamun lake?
                 or the mountain range perhaps
                  far from the plains
                  Hey! who has heard of him
                       even as much as a sliver 
                                                      of news

                  and no one shall reply thus now
                  no one speaks my language

                  wind slithers still
                  and the Peganum quakes

                  I tread this long path still
                  upon the pitch black darkness of this night still
                                                                       Me.                           Alone.

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Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi (He/They) is a queer, Iranian-born, Toronto-based poet, writer and translator. Shortlisted for the 2021 Austin Clarke Poetry Prize, they are the winner of the 2021 Vallum Poetry Prize and the author of three poetry chapbooks and two translated poetry chapbooks. Their debut poetry collection Me, You, Then Snow is out with Gordon Hill Press. Their second book WJD is forthcoming in a double volume with the translation of Saeed Tavanaee’s The OceanDweller from Gordon Hill Press in Fall 2022. Their collaborative poetry manuscript with poet Klara Du Plessis is forthcoming with Palimpsest Press in Fall 2023. @DearKestrel on Instagram

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CiCi Suen is an artist based in London. From 2015 to 2017 she studied illustration at the University of the Arts London. She created a lot of illustrations and comics and found her own style and direction during this time. CiCi uses charcoal and pastel to create unique hand-drawn artwork. She is attracted to nature because of its complex and often chaotic structure. Web: http://www.cicisuen.com/

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