The Forbidden: Poems from Iran and its Exiles

Map of Ashen Roads

71 Map of Ashen Roads Sholeh Wolpé To put a cigarette between her fingers, just so, bring it to her lips and inhale, just so, launch smoke rings in the air, just so. What could be cooler than that? This is how she dips her finger in cigarette ash and draws clouds beneath her toes a bridge of hearts to a six bedroom house, a tall spectacled spouse, a German Shepherd, awards, diplomas, pictures of love under sheets soft as moss and green as the sea inside her womb, of rainy Sunday mornings with pancakes, her children barely out of dreams, sweet hot butter dripping from their mouths, New Year pajama parties with friends, a secret herb garden behind a rusty door. Beneath this blizzard of ashes a husband examines her head with a stethoscope, declares her absurd, her son lives and dies, dies and lives again, her tongue sprouts swollen wings, a gun smokes against a beloved forehead, and the willow in the yard weeps its sap. In Tehran the bird’s egg hatches a cat, her childhood house coughs black smoke and roads turn to dead-end alleys. Over it all she draws a lover, pours her dark curls like tar into his hands, 72 feeds words to a locomotive train bound for a place called away, and tells herself, this is exile. And in the end, her face a map of ashen roads, she goes to the sink, lathers and rubs, slowly raises her chin to the mirror. And stares. ...