Jahan Khatun is even when luxuriating in the mirror writing lines
as there are other hands on hand to comb with wax these locks that like this river flow
ensnaring lovers half the year & others painting henna over Bahman stains
& others rubbing alcohol on eyelids with a powder made from baby Jesus
breath to cure her tears & more to ponybrush mascara on her moustache others
who with ground red marble throne her kissing spot & more to hot glue silken pistils
to her lashes so they willow droop & more who know the price of plants & dust
her lids with helianthus annuus soot who douse her shoulders with an iridescent
fragrance made from wild flowers more who plot her beauty mark like Betelgeuse
above her mouth's Orion's belt & even more adjusting veils & tutus too
but no one else to write her poems. Laid alone across her loveseat fingering
a manuscript illuminated she calls back two hundred something years to find
another of her kind & cups the miniature as if a glass. She rests her manner
manicured on the divine divan of Mahsati. The World inside the Moon.