there’s a need for a blade
a command
some cigarettes, and a few refined
but diluted smiles
for a suicide in a civil society
so that first-class citizens wear “ped malls”
across their lips and shake their head
over your carcass

Salam

third-world beloved
love me so I can break your sunflower seeds at the cinema
where you can make out with me and my mom
can find time to search my room
for cigarette buds

Allahu-akbar

god is thirty-four times greater than an idol
with glued-on pupils on a Russian doll
in the materials of Ophir Rus
which lay eggs in my mind
his prophets gulp down books
dress in colorful tops and anarchistic trousers
to make you commit they firmly
and then provocatively
stimulate your feet toward themselves

third-world beloved

love me with your beautifully accused eyes
because the person beneath you
decoys peril and is the remaining muscles
of a half-chewed fetus
the person beneath you
adores the cologne scent
and in the association of pro-gay feminists
she has torn herself in two
though without being civil
she makes love to the have-halves and the half-globes

but let the left side of the globe be theirs
because they have left their undergarments
in our Frankish toilets
love me
because my lips are deceivingly swollen
and the one jerking off a few kilometers away
arrives at a philosophical despair

Allahu-akbar

god is thirty-four times greater than an idol
and sanctity, like a vomit basin, is set aside from our carnal gums
only a black chador with dark, orderly, hysterical smiles
and raised buttocks appearing from behind the stands
could make me a good citizen; also, March 8th
and the replications of Shirin Ebadi
backward women learn prostitution from civic discourse
Bill Clinton’s capital is within the black brassiere of Afghan women

Love me third-world beloved
at this public square right here
make out with me
I love those collective and humanitarian suicides
you can own the half-globe on the right
with a diazepamic nerve, from home to psychiatric hospitals
from the psychiatric hospital to sex in the weekend
burping at four o’clock
reading Lorca at five
bus refuge and jacuzzi ejaculations
blades, and advice at the night’s end

love me

third-world beloved
Keep me in these eastern astral densities
in my diazepamic nerves
god is thirty-four times trivial than an idol






Translator’s Note

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Maral Taheri is a remarkable poet, and though she hasn't published a book due to her refusal to abide by the censorship laws in Iran and Afghanistan, her journal and social media publications are widely read and celebrated. Taheri's poems are uncanny in their narration of femininity in a time when political violence and misogyny have destroyed all that there’s to home. Taheri’s verse connects memories of love, sex, and war with intertextual references to Islamic theological texts. Some of her juxtapositions emerge from her personal experiences, while others are informed by her readings of Western literature and philosophy. She writes dystopian poems by thematizing self-destruction and suggesting that suicide in the poem is the only way through which she can arrive at self-autonomy and ingenuity. Taheri has lived most of her life in Iran but just moved to France.