Poems- by Soodabeh Saeidnia

A Sun in a Puddle

The day before yesterday

A glorious bright yellow sun

tiptoed on the sleepy horizon

and fell into a turbid puddle

The puddle wondered

if it’s going to dawn again

Yesterday

A puddle swallowed

a dismissing sun

and started to blaze

to laser-cut the eyes

who was wondering if

it’s going to dawn again

Today

How dreary a sunburnt sun

slipped into a greedy puddle

and wept until we all

cried and wondered

if it’s going to dawn again

Tomorrow

People say a wounded sun

is going to be executed

inside a puddle

and we all know that

it’s not going to dawn again

The day after tomorrow

May a sunny puddle

bleed to die or distill to dry

May a reborn sun

go up the ladder of the sky

and never set in a nefarious puddle

 

Wall

I am a wall and I am not

I was made of data bricks. I was never built up

I never had the windows. I had a window

with a bitten apple on it, opened toward another wall

I was a female wall and I was not

I was never male nor female

nor did I have any sexual affinity

I belonged to a writer. I did not belong to anybody

I was a wall right on the borders

between understanding and doubting

between the Exons and Introns of a DNA

when it goes to be copied in the body

and Introns must be removed by splicing

during the maturation of the RNAs

I was the interpretation of those borders

The ancestors needed a reason for boundaries

I was that reason in lack of the science but

I am not a reason for any border-walls

in the third millennium proposed by

anybody even you Mr. Trump

 

I was a wall built for segregation

in between prisoners and freemen,

the eastern and western towns, the northern

and southern countries, Jews and Muslims

I was always a wall. I used to be a wall

in need of an opened window

toward an apple garden. I hate the walls

I never hate anything or anybody except a wall  

*Published in a British literary journal: “I am not a Silent Poet” March 2016

 

 

Touch of a Butterfly

Every night, in my dreams

I see you can’t fly like a mosquito

trapped in a spider web

and I always come forth

to catch you

and throw you deep in my dungeon

A dungeon made by accumulated revenges

by rusted rods of unfairness

and dirty bricks of rage

by disgusting mosses of old

unforgettable mistakes

but always a butterfly comes

and lands on my shoulder

and wakes me up

 

Anonymous

I wasn’t there

I wasn’t anywhere

Once, a sound whispered my name

My name woke up but found itself

beyond me and living on a poor planet

so left me behind

The sound and my name merged

into an echo, traveled

and passed through the space

Then, the space bent toward the time

For that, the echo is still spreading

while I am living on Earth, an anonymous

whose time is running out

 

Soodabeh Saeidnia was born in Iran (1973) and received her Pharm.D. (1997) from Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, and also Ph.D. of Pharmacognosy (2002) from Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS), Iran. She has worked as Visiting Researcher and awarded a Foreign Researcher Fellowship to work as a Research Associate both in Kyoto University, Japan (2002-2003 and 2005-2006), as well as Assistant and Associate Professor at TUMS (2007-2015) and Visiting Professor at Saskatchewan University, Canada (2013-2014). She has written roughly 150 scientific papers for various academic journals, as well as academic books and book chapters in both English and Farsi.

She is also interested in English literature and poetry, and has published a collection of her poems, Harfhaee- Baraye- Khodam (Words for myself), in the Farsi language. Now, Soodabeh is living in New York and her poems have been published (or a head of publishing) in the American magazines and literary journals including Squawk Back, Sisyphus Quarterly, Paradox, TimBookTu, Bobbling of the Irrational, SPINE, American Writers Journal, Tuck Magazine, La Libertad, Tiny Poetry, Indiana Voice Journal, The Pen, 352 degrees and the Great Weather for Media. A number of her poems have been printed in the books Where the Mind Dwells and American Poet by Eber & Wein Publishing as well as Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze by Johnson Publications and Artistic. Her newest books, Street of the Ginkgo Trees and Voice of Monarch Butterflies are now available online on Amazon.