Nirvana Shahriar

Nuclear, Nuclear, Nuclear

after Aria Aber’s “Azalea Azalea”

I.

At dawn my aunts tell me they’re going north, to avoid air strikes,

while I listen to the first bird call of the morning.

The rhythm of its warbles reminds me of writing a poem for the first time.

I ask my aunts if our cousins near the nuclear facility are safe, 

and she reminds me that there’s more to Iran 

than nuclear, nuclear, nuclear.

And every day since, I worry I’ll never write it, 

a different kind of poem, 

for this is what I want to consider:

the passage of a bird, a color, 

moving the mind away from dusty death.

I never want the song to end, but I know the tomb atones for no one.

I wait for the right time, with tenderness as my sword, 

and I press ink to earth and look for the right words 

to lead my language.

II.

Dear staircase of death, stir not at my desk

as I scroll through headlines. 30,000 pounds,

the weight of one too many aunts,

a bunker buster pokes an ancient mountain for the first time.

30,000 pounds in the name of nuclear, nuclear, nuclear.

They say writing is a form of witnessing, but I don’t know shit about martyrdom. 

What color was the sky when those missiles flew over,

missiles in the name of my father’s fallen city,

and where did all the birds go when it happened,

when the bunker buster departed from a place I never wanted to visit 

and arrived at a place that visits me every day,

what did it see? What does the drone witness?

III.

On their way out of the city, my aunts tell me

don’t worry when I ask is everyone ok?

And next year they will tell me not to worry, again,

as bombs like droplets fall on the dirt that birthed me, 

while I rearrange the letters of my origins and see: 

Iran is an anagram for rain.

But there must be more to home than rain, and there must be more to witness than writing.

There must be more than nuclear, nuclear, nuclear,

more than what the missiles witness.

IV.

In the evening my aunts tell me they can’t go anywhere anymore,

while I search for signs of life in every image of rubble I see 

and wonder whether the news will tell me something about my aunts

besides nuclear, nuclear, nuclear,

something about them that I haven’t already witnessed.

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Image from Pexels

Nirvana Shahriar is a poet and PhD candidate in English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is writing a dissertation on contemporary US poetry with an emphasis on SWANA diaspora writers. She is also an editor at Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies. Her creative/critical work has been published in The Black Scholar, Foundry, and The Lamp.

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