Farnaz Fatemi

Artifacts

In every childhood photo she and I
are dressed like one another.

By accident, twenty-first century Icelanders
unearthed a settlement beneath their capital.

Fur-trimmed pantsuits, cherry jumpers,
floral pinafores. This is how I learned to see myself.

Their atlases were wrong. Where they thought
their ancestors lived was miles away.

One day the moon consumed my sister’s face
and I thought she’d left.

They’d never had reason to doubt
where the old turf walls and longhouse stood.

It took me years to see myself. I wondered about the tides
and where they came from, found people who might know.

An earlier century, previously empty, was now
populated, full of stories they’d need to learn.

Now a photo in a pile: she is on the floor,
We are wearing the cherries. I have climbed her body.

Add markers to their maps, stand in old places
with new words for what they know.

I stare into the cavern of my sister’s mouth and see her sadness,
the walls of our childhood homes, and the past answers.

I name what I see.

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Farnaz Fatemi is a member and cofounder of The Hive Poetry Collective (hivepoetry.org) in Santa Cruz County, CA. Her poetry and prose appears in Catamaran Literary Reader, Crab Orchard Review, SWWIM Daily, Grist Journal, several anthologies including My Shadow is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora, and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope and elsewhere. Farnaz taught Writing at UC Santa Cruz from 1997-2018. www.farnazfatemi.com.