Iranian-Bay Area Poetry

This piece was featured first on Mar 12 for One Good Thing, a weekly newsletter brought to you by Alexis Madrigal about his take on Bay Area art, culture & nature. Subscribe today.

This is a newsletter about one good thing, and indeed, we will get there. But there’s necessary context for this particular good thing.

In a war, the government wants us to think about missiles. A whole nation (a whole region!) becomes a map with little red icons. The people conducting the war introduce a new vocabulary—warfighters, excursion—that serves to estrange us from the reality of the thing. They tell us the names of weapons and list the numbers of strikes and the weights of bombs.

They don’t tell us about the grandparents in Tehran. Or some guy selling melons along the side of the road or making a delivery on a scooter. There are 90 million people in Iran, millions more in the communities of the diaspora.

The Bay Area might not be Tehrangeles, but I count myself lucky to know and love many Iranians here in the Bay. So, in this moment, I want to bring you two local poets from the diaspora. Why poets? Because at a time when everything is about the geopolitical, the tactical, the metallic, poetry reflects the interiority of human beings.

Armen Davoudian was born in Iran to parents of Armenian descent. His poetry envelopes us in rich sensory detail, as he attempts to understand his otherness as an immigrant to the U.S. and gay man. In “Coming Out of the Shower,” Davoudian paints a picture of the family bath, and him soaking as his mother applies her makeup, the kind of unseeing that they do around each other’s bodies. The final three stanzas have Davoudian emerging, slyly, beautifully.

wash out my hair with rosewater shampoo,
which means I’ll smell like you
all day. Mama, I shout, I’m coming out,
and as you look away I knot

around me tight your lavender robe de chambre,
cinching my waist, and clamber
out of the tub, taking care not to step
outside the cotton mat and drip

on the cracked floor you’ve polished with such zeal
we’re mirrored in each tile.
Yet, you’d forgive the spillage, or forget.
What else will you love me despite?”

Our other poet is Persis Karim, who has also been a guest on Forum, back in her role of running the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State. She writes many things, but in this poem, “The Seed Collector’s Daughter,” she’s reflecting on making a home, on rootedness. So much can be held inside the tiniest seed.

Small jars and glasses began to appear everywhere:
sprigs of thyme, red begonias, spearmint, spider
plants. She guarded them like small
children. Under the light of the Madrone
she transplanted as a sapling, she built
a nursery. In the filtered shade,
she cultivated seedlings of every sort:
annuals, perennials, cuttings of pomegranate,
fig, lemon. She had no desire to buy plants—
they spoke to her, greeted her as if she was a fairy
sent to rescue and cajole them into future seasons.

Her mother “moved life across time and space, making things come alive.” And Karim, too, concludes, “I know this need.” As do I.

Let us remember their families, which are also our families. Let us keep life moving.

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Alexis Madrigal, Co-Host, Forum

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