A Forced Departure, poems by Nasim Basiri
Nasim Basiri is an Iranian poet and activist from Borazjan in the south of Iran. She currently lives in the United States where she works and studies at Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Oregon State University. Nasim’s poetry and other literary works depict the suffering of humans, political and gendered violence and address the injustices associated with marginalization and global apartheid experienced by people in the Third World and the Middle East in particular.
A Forced Departure
we moved across the country alone
by a forced departure
when home was burnt down to ashes
and the screaming silhouettes of our headless palm trees
sang our goodbye song
without leaves and bird nests
we crossed the mountains alone
crossed the seas and oceans alone
nowhere was home
nowhere is home
still
violence moves and moves our bodies
to the unfamiliar geographies and infernos
nowhere is home
nowhere is home
nowhere is home
nowhere
is
home
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The Sun Still Shines on Her Grave
the sun shines
a woman hangs herself in hanging gardens of Babylon
with a flower on her hair
wearing a miniskirt and throwing up blood on the world
the sun still shines on her grave
lightening up a world that was not hers
The sun shines
In her neighborhood country Iran
where a woman is brutally raped in the name of religion
in Iranian prisons
virgin women go to heaven
she had to be raped by the revolutionary guards
to go to hell
the sun shines
she’s hanged in early morning light
after the morning prayers
and the sun still shines on her grave in a desert by the Persian Gulf
lighting up a world that was not hers
Echoes of Death and Murder
For Masih Alinejad
Intimate memories of wound and blood
Shaped who we are
In our walks to unfamiliar paths of escape and dispersion
The pains of women’s rebellion
Is buried under barbaric echoes of death and murder
Still
The daughters of Revolution Street are singing the chants of freedom
Chants of despair and sorrow
Chants of exiles and displacement
Chants of hope and struggle
With the wind in their hair
© Nasim Basiri