^{Translated by Ghayde Ghraowi}

The soul departing from trees of speech
Does not want to ascend 
Nor to be buried;
It wants to finish reading.
..
My heart is a stone that stumbled in the dirt and broke apart 
..
O the mud of the storm, 
heavy, it drags my soul 
From one tavern to another

 

My hand is a cage that forgot to lock its door
So speech flew away
..
I am made of music 
That departs on an evening jaunt 
To the garden of the unknown 
..
Wherever my sorrow comes to preside
Mud is my door  

 

Outside the blathering cemetery
a lone word was lost 
And began to limp 
..
My garden throne was forlorn; 
peopled with memories 
..
My heart, 
a garden filled with thrones

 

The signal was green 
We crossed the road to eternity 
In familiar forms of transportation 
..
In the furor of death
A new tree sprouted 
In fine script
..
Its scent is like infirmity, 
This soul

 

It was as it must be
I was as I must be
But we did not agree 
..
In a hefty handbag
I abandoned my superstition.  
The soul travels, rising, falling  
From an expensive handbag 
Out leaks my mud
..
Who can direct me toward mud that resembles my dust.

1

Like any Messiah taken unaware by death
I saw my father                he was nodding to the palms, surrendered
To his sweet sad songs, was greeting
Happily the doves which settled on his shoulder

Alone     no shadow to soften his loneliness 
Alone the clouds    were praying to him

And I was calling    Father! Death is colder than a cup of water on my body, and
Fonder to me than sand

Father    the water surrounds me with longing and there is no time to shame the night 
With light, and melancholy with memories

2

My father, answering
What is gone     is gone

3

Prepare your exiles for the hard years, turn absence 
Into silver ribbons through your hair
Push your hands into the pockets of your shirt
Out comes your country 
Brimming ashes, fragment-crammed

4

Father     the directions have exhausted me

5

My father, saying  
What is gone     is gone

6

Distance has left me limp, father
Hunger is complete with me
And I am full with all the countries that threw me 
A babe into the river
This longing is no great thing to me
Earth switched on me, the skies
Are not the skies

No light to guard me     for distance betrays
No wind to bear me    for the clouds they age

Between my shadow and me / the butterflies    
Enchanted by the poems and the songs

7

My father, saying  
What is gone     is gone

8

Neither will the butterflies restore childhood to the water
Nor mother tongue loan you its ABC names
Nor dream pack your soul with clouds    Nor poetry, nor hopes

9

Like any Messiah taken unaware by death         My father
It was not a dream I saw, it was 
Reading the secret of drought on the palms
It was too much for poetry          but no great thing to death

I was calling to him: Father of wind
Father of water
Father of night
Father of hunger

                                      Father of death
                 Father of death
Father of death 

Surrendered to his sad yearning songs
Greeting the doves 
Which settled on his shoulders

Like any Messiah taken unaware by death

My father, saying
Be not afraid. Of mortal flesh is Man
Of mortal flesh is every son
Of Adam

What is gone     is gone

Vass Valley. Fall 1920
(Aslat the dead)

You left me 
on the Swede’s farm

alone and wrapped
in my large kolt

-

I didn’t stay there

-

One fall and one winter
we cried together
Then you joined

the herd and
left
As for me I spread
my kolt into wings
and flew away

blood drained 
from my body and
vanished

-

I couldn’t stay

Where I had fallen
never to rise
again

-

Did you feel me Father

blowing across the sea

Didn’t you hear me

Among the sea birds
when you arrived 
with your summer-fattened
reindeer

-

I was the lone
strand from the reindeer’s coat
gliding across the surface of the sea

in the bay by
the reindeer’s swimming spot

-

And the pretty hill
in the fall-summer sun

Where the herd 
had to find its own way
down the rocks

Until thick fog rolled in

And it was
impossible to see
the pitch of the slope

-

I was the forest 
thickening

around the great
forest way
hewn 
in olden times

-

Where your lead reindeer
cleaned its horns

Did you feel it Mother
in your hand

that long while you spent
milking the tame cow
who then disappeared
among the trees

-

To search for lichen
and mushrooms and lick
urine from the ground

-

I was the weight
in the stone you brought
back from the coast

to place on 
my grave

One stone each summer

you carry home
to the winterland
Nila and you

-

Mother you caress
that scar on my
brother’s forehead
as though it were a
whisper from me

-

Because I once
threw a wooden log 
at him

that hit right there

Nila when I fell

-

You continued
to treat me
the same

as though I
hadn’t changed

-

The same old
slow smile
while my head quietly
wanted to roll back
into place

deep between my shoulders

Nila did you feel that
I was the movement
under the boat

in the mountain lake where
Mother and you
spread the nets

-

Did you catch
my gaze
in the eye of the storm

-

I stood on a branch
my legs were like 
sticks
When the wind bent
back the yellowing
leaves

I saw strange mountains

with roaring rivers

-

And I flew over
the boat and called
to you:

There will be rain
there will be rain

Dápmotjávri. Aslat’s grave. Karesuando Cemetery.
Fall–Winter 1920
(Ber-Joná)

That fall
the Lapp Bailiff came

-

The ruling language
ran over us

Swedish words
impossible to pronounce

-

They pushed in
through our clothes
coated our skin

-

-

The needling gaze

a rain through
all that one loves

-

Dirty were we
living with dogs

half-nomads who
followed after livestock

-

Bread so tough it 
made your teeth fall out
baked by our women

-

In the midst of the breeding grounds
he appeared
with the darkening sky

To hold forth
among our
cows in heat

-

He had a message
from the three 
countries’ men

Swedes Norwegians
and Finns

-

Far away from 
the reindeer’s world several
families had been selected

We had to start forcing
our herds to graze on
strange lands

We were to be driven
from the forests mountains
and lakes

Migration paths and songs
had to be stifled
stricken from memory

-

The herd’s memory

the reindeer calves’ legs
that always
led us home

-

Now they would be born 
on other lands

Now each step
homeward in autumn
was a departure from
our lives

-

My brother and the others

said farewell to the trails
and hillsides

-

Never again would
we sit on the island’s slope
where the ocean smoothed
the stones

where Aslat once
had learned to walk

With this my stomach 
tied itself in dark knots

-

While winter 
as ever
whitened on

from all the colors
around us

-

And we tried
to scare off wolves
we traveled fast through
frozen forests

-

Then I was again
at home in the winterland

Watching twilight
dwindle gray between
gray farms

-

In the birch forest
across the ice
was a group of cots

With pillars of smoke
rising beyond 
the graveyard
where you were waiting
Ristin

-

Beyond
the graveyard walls

by Aslat’s grave

I took your hand

you had an
infected wound above
your eyebrow

-

Silent you placed 
the last stone
from the coast

on his grave

-

Nila’s fingers
had to be held
like jerking
reins

And the familiar
waves spoke 
to me 

of a freedom
in the sea

-

I said that I 
hated the reindeer

but needed them
too

-

We have to leave 
Aslan again

For the sake of work
and the herd

Here he would 
remain
alone

While we were being driven
from our homes

-

Then you said:

What kind of home is it
where no one dares say
our son’s name

-

Aslat is forgotten

Only his fate 
is remembered

But you promised me

that his head was resting
safely in his grave

-

The dead
were not allowed to be 
exhumed

-

And the bells
tolled beyond
the forest

-

We were called 
to a church weekend

One last time
we would
meet our own

-

Because now it was full

It was full of
people in the village

Karesuando church village. Winter 1920
(Ristin)

The Swede’s fingers 
all inside my mouth

clothing strewn
across the floor

-

Me thinking 
it was because of my
bad teeth

that the traveling doctor had come

-

With hard tools
he measured me

learned men
in every nook

With razor-sharp
scratching pens

they went
through me

-

I could tell that the
short one
was taking shape 
on their papers

Using royal ink
to draw
the racial animal

-

The shackles
of our obedience

unfastened
my home-sewn belt

-

My breasts hung
their distaste blazed

-

I saw how they
wrinkled their
slender noses

laughing
all the while

-

My friend beside me
was quick to help me
on with my kolt

Then she quietly translated
their questions
about what we did 
when menstruating

-

Over the doctor’s shoulder
the minister

-

And I heard him 
say in Finnish:

The way their men drink
makes God cry
and the Devil laugh

And the shame

took root in me

because of my dark hair
and my
dark eyes

-

Outside the barn
my friend’s daughters
shivering waiting 
for their treatment

-

And my poor Nila
was fished out

from where I don’t know

A camera was pointed
at his
upset face

until he just
sank through the floor

-

I watched them trample 
him
with heavy boots

Tall chairs
were dragged out and they
sat down on him

-

I noticed how big 
he’d gotten
not a child anymore

there he stood lost
and mute among their 
bare hands
touching him

-

He should come 
with us to the institution
said the doctor

and finally
my body obeyed

-

And I went up 
to the men
and pulled the weak one 
from the Swede’s grip

With every stroke of her pencil  
the little girl unfurls dreams
and traces childhood’s uncertain roadmaps. 

A twisted loom,
lines on a page mending sorrows
which she weaves into life’s purity.

In a scarring script
she tattoos the wavering future
on the bare skinned wall.

Without commas in her gaze,
the little girl dribbles colons with each breath
and swears an exclamation mark
is a lollipop:

“Is growing up for real or make-believe?”
Dot dot dot, I gasped.
A question mark is a fisherman’s hook.

I’d taken the bait of uncertainty, 
when she offered me as consolation,
wrapped in quotation marks, a single Smartie.

In the end, tree, a cloudy shelter will come 
to cover your dry, aged branches.

It will lend you, short on green,
the white glow of its weightlessness

As a drop undoes the cloud into tears
I’ll tell my children:
no, the tree didn’t die,
your childhood sun has set.

My life circled round
every side a destination  

—I’m a budding stone
the sky at my fingertips
I exist beyond the silence
inside voices and their words
inside voiceless words

And inside these insides where blue arouses the clitoris
as my dead pass teeming with sky
to the wonder of the earth floor dizzy with birds.

A floor within the swoon?
it is me passing by, it is we the budding dead
the sky within another sky
to the wonder of two eyes kaleido-scoping the horizon:

I have skies at my fingertips
and I am not short of ground:

—My life, a circle route:
everywhere destination!

First visit.

I'm here because I want to be left alone
 

Gender Survey:

In order to proceed, I need access to
your body i.e. brain
your life i.e. sex life
your medical history
your stories
 

Second visit.

 
Have I completed a gender survey so I can cope with being a poet
or am I a poet in order to cope with the gender survey
so used to narrating myself
in exchange for fees and care

The glossy floors and the large window
upon arrival I leave
my name and agency at the reception
I want to talk about my complex and people want to describe me as respectable
to line up the words on the table in front of the psychologist
so we can look at them and pretend we’re equal

A gatekeeper may deny access
a sword can burn against the throat
can still be called angel
fear’s throbbing anatomy
the throat artery's defiant disposition 
highlights a sample of beautiful truths

the same obedience as usual

the same hands folded in my lap
 
 

Third visit.
 

Gender Survey:
Describe your social situation

 
Saw a snake in the woods today
winding across the gravel on its stomach 
as if it didn’t hurt
and every obstacle it met on the way

it slid right around

Imagine if my body could help me like that

Fourth visit
 

I cancel
 

I have reconstructed everything
the boy the girl and the autistic one
documented the fatigue and depression

With the diagnosis as a veil a shield I slid through the corridors.
In the middle of puberty, I escaped sexuality 

got out of girl parties and boyhood problems
got out of punishment and ostracism
stopped learning from the group
how women apply makeup to put on a face

The group of girls I tried to belong to
didn’t work out and lost interest
the punishments ricocheted against the mirrors
newly awakened, I cut myself on the shards
without a clear direction or sender

So the girl was kept intact
floated across the school yard, slid through
high school corridors
rape cultures
mostly without a scratch

Women were formed there
I understand now, as protection and strategy
formed groups there
dancing in a circle around activist tote bags
they became women
I did not become a body

The Publisher
 

It needs a more structured wholeness 

 
I want to reside in the hard and permanent
so I construct a suite of poems and a man to live inside
I want to be pinned down securely
to be normalized and become part of the dictionary
assigned a home
to leave

Scenes flow together
public libraries and pride festivals
small town train stations
press photo and description max 50 words
Twenty-five thousand miles of nerves
I choose the reddest one
pull it out through my throat and set it on stage
my life is three minutes long
they say perfect ten
I'm trying to boil
down to my essence
become a concentrate
of my own existence
then it's called politics

 
Tried to throw out my inner baby Jesus with the bath water
but it held firm inside the lines, screaming and screaming
of course I want nothing more than to fish for Christian Democrats

lure with a little hook of poetry
this body is so useful as bait

People came to me to confess
their heteronormative sins, I said
here, eat my body
I am a worm
and you will be fished up
you will be saved
you will be good
but why do I long for heaven
when I like it best in the flower’s moist soil

I stepped back from my death
it was strange and inhuman to me

*

and now my eyes are knives slicing the night to
                                                         split the mist

rising inside
like the tears of a poem

shedding its sadness
over the warm flight of egrets
flitting about

after the docile defeat
 
*
 
now my eyes are knives slicing the mist like a di-vi-ded body

I stepped back from my death

and rose up
clandestine
syllable by syllable
almost like the unwritten poem
and suddenly
hair tousled by days of abandon

I find your discontent
in a commonplace dress
the furled poetic fabric 
that switches the body on

to disarray

in a song without refrain
some fruit scattered

in the rush to ripen

these mineral days
I want to climb beyond the reach of words
where my death will not be
the death of others too
even if I see my sorrow in yours
and then I don’t.

Translated by Christian Gullette

What’s in a name? she asks,

with her blonde hair,

ponytail,

and blue-eyed gaze,

her memories of summer cottages,

rhyming clues for Christmas gifts and debates over Finland’s

official languages.

“What’s in a name?”

She says

we ought to take my mother’s name

and pave the way for the future.

To show the name belongs

on book covers

and voting ballots.

And not just on the sign above an ethnic restaurant.

Easy for her to say, my mother says.

“She doesn’t bear the burden of the name like you do.

For her, the name is a sign of goodness,

of virtue,

a silk ribbon that leaves no trace 

when she removes it.”

 

I say change is always painful,

someone has to be the first.

Then it’ll have to be someone else, she says.

Can’t the name be one of my virtues? I ask.

She says,

You’ll just be their monkey.

Translated by Christian Gullette

What’s in a name? she asks,

with her blonde hair,

ponytail,

and blue-eyed gaze,

her memories of summer cottages,

rhyming clues for Christmas gifts and debates over Finland’s

official languages.

“What’s in a name?”

She says

we ought to take my mother’s name

and pave the way for the future.

To show the name belongs

on book covers

and voting ballots.

And not just on the sign above an ethnic restaurant.

Easy for her to say, my mother says.

“She doesn’t bear the burden of the name like you do.

For her, the name is a sign of goodness,

of virtue,

a silk ribbon that leaves no trace 

when she removes it.”

 

I say change is always painful,

someone has to be the first.

Then it’ll have to be someone else, she says.

Can’t the name be one of my virtues? I ask.

She says,

You’ll just be their monkey.

Translated by Christian Gullette

I read poems,

describe a family being crushed by its own baggage.

A publisher says I fill a niche.

“We want to make sure nobody mistakes you

for Athena Farrokhzad.”

She says that many of the poems are good,

but certain ones are

typical immigrant poems.

“You can cut those.

There are, after all, two poets in Sweden

and one in Denmark

writing about those things.”

I ask what people are writing about today,

what is considered new?

“People write about all kinds of things!

The archipelago,

the Winter War,

and alcoholism.”