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Avenue Vali Asr
- University of Arkansas Press
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Avenue Vali Asr H SUSAN ATEFAT-PECKHAM For Kholeh Lili We need another Rosa Parks to pin herself to that front seat and say, I am too old for later. Smoke folded edges in city air. Buses littered streets, dented, worn, old tin cans crushed at the station. I unstuck the front doors, pushed the edges forward and apart to meet the fat thumb pointing backward. Boro Ounja! he said. Over there! And I turned to see my place among the colored scarves behind. My breasts warmed steel rounds at my ribs. I was half-sick of standing there, breathing in wet wool of hair, breathing in their breaths. We are not sheep, I said,We are not sheep. A woman turned. I tugged AVENUEVALI ASR 143 at clinging cloth. Someone shushed me quiet. Do not speak, she said, It is good this way, without voice. She dabbed her head and sweat pressed through colored silk. She pushed and shoved the heat for space. I saw her hand grip at the window. I heard the bustle of a large woman behind me telling the others to hear and peasants lolled in their chairs up front, sunned their hairy hands under the smoke of windows, kicked their feet up on empty chairs, leering into the small noises we made. I know that words can’t help them here. Hot breath hovers in old wind. A folded sky spreads in Tehran. 144 SUSAN ATEFAT-PECKHAM ...