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    Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic
    Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic
    Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic
    Ebook79 pages32 minutes

    Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic

    By Roger Sedarat

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    About this ebook

    In his provocative, brave, and sometimes brutal first book of poems, Roger Sedarat directly addresses the possibility of political change in a nation that some in America consider part of “the axis of evil.” Iranianon his father’s side, Sedarat explores the effects of the Islamic Revolution of 1979—including censorship, execution, and pending war—on the country as well as on his understanding of his own origins. Written in a style that is as sure-footed as it is experimental, Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic confronts the past and current injustices of the Iranian government while retaining a sense of respect and admiration for the country itself. Woven into this collection are the author’s vividdescriptions of the landscape as well as the people of Iran. Throughout, Sedarat exhibits a keen appreciation for the literary tradition of Iran, and inmaking it new, attempts to preserve the culture of a country he still claims as his own.

    Thigh
    With honesty of homemade butter,
    paddle-churned cream (eshta in Arabic,
    ecstasy foaming to the brim), a woman
    river-bathes, sheet of oil-black hair breaking
    in rapids, cut lemon scintillating
    olive skin free of tree-stumped chador, skirts
    within skirts, peal of her bell-body rung
    muffled in Iran heat—a splash of white.
    The rhythm of pumice scraping her feet,
    sandbar against warm current, frothy cape
    a bee-bubbled hive, honeyed trace curling
    to her bare knees, thick transparent lather.
    At a Tehran bazaar endless gold-stores
    could never return me anywhere pure.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOhio University Press
    Release dateDec 1, 2007
    ISBN9780821442494
    Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic
    Author

    Roger Sedarat

    Roger Sedarat is an assistant professor in the MFA program at Queens College. He is the recipient of scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference as well as a St. Botolph Society poetry grant. His verse has appeared in such journals as New England Review, Atlanta Review, and Poet Lore.

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      Book preview

      Dear Regime - Roger Sedarat

      Part A(s If Change Were Possible)

      Ghost Story

      By the time said country gets the bomb

      my infant son will read the news.

      For now I merely crackle each page

      of the paper before him, if only

      to shake myself from reality.

      How often this boy (descendent of said country)

      saves me from terrifying thoughts of the future.

      Just yesterday while washing a month’s worth of laundry

      I became a magician, pulling sheets upon sheets

      from a single container, as if to trick him

      into believing that things are eternal.

      Then when I laid his two-foot-tall body

      upon a sea of freshly dried clothes,

      he showed me how little we matter,

      enshrouding himself in a white cotton sheet

      for his mock-Muslim burial.

      I remembered the morning’s story

      and he began shaking himself free.

      Tiny ghost of the symbolic, insistent snickerdoodle

      intent on making life meaningful,

      go forth in the world with your blankness,

      cover that which becomes too scary to see,

      take back your first word as soon as it’s spoken,

      and so haunt the world as a prophet of innocence.

      Dear Regime,

      After you’ve ground him into powder,

      you can burn this to a fine ash. His family feels

      it would be better off with nothing.

      My father returned from Iran with everything but his bones.

      He said customs claimed them as government property.

      We laid him on a Persian carpet in front of the television.

      When I’d hold his wrist to his face

      because he wanted to know the time,

      we could see the holes made by swords in his elbow.

      His arm reminded me of kebab kubideh.

      It was hard for him to look outside;

      he said the cumulus clouds

      were too much like marrow

      and he couldn’t stand watching the dog

      sniff the backyard, searching

      for the rest of him. My sister and I put him to bed

      thinking that beside our mother

      he’d turn into himself,

      but through the door we only heard him crying,

      telling his wife he could never again make love,

      and through the keyhole we saw her shivering with him

      wrapped around her like an old blanket

      until he died one morning.

      She folded him into a rectangle,

      mailing him in a white shoebox

      back to his country.

      Body Cleaner

      My cousin Miriam’s friend,

      let’s call her Azadeh

      (meaning freedom),

      prepares women for execution,

      washing bodies and brushing hair

      on the last night of their lives.

      I hear they eat a simple meal

      of cheese, bread, and fresh greens

      before lying on a sofa

      in a room with no windows

      waiting to be informed of the morning

      much like they were told of their

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