Execution Square

Anxious I am.
Like the rope hanging off the gallows,
I’m wrapped inside myself.
Like a dice, I'm searching for myself.
On the kerb, I’m walking with a child's foot.
With a cow's horn, I’m scaring all the world
Turning the sense of calmness inside the color blue,
I turn to turn my shadow’s face
the execution square’s hanging clock
the childish eyes of death.
Sometimes a sparrow moves the life
shakes a man’s shoulders
so the world returns to its first position
so a branch can find its own place.

A Curse in War

With no fingers to shoot
I'm a curse in war
a soldier who takes his name on shoulder;
The mortar bombs tear my daughter’s name apart
and my wife's picture
trolls hand to hand at the enemy’s camp.
I've gathered my wounds
to go back to the border line
to the raised flesh of another wound.

Behind this hill

They brought you with lips sealed
with a smile accumulated in the corners of their eyes
You could still hear the soldiers’ voice
the sound of wounds

I should have gathered your voice
shed it in your helmet
and trenched behind this hill
Many soldiers had conquered these hills before me
Lots of leaves had fallen
Nobody knew when the Fall was going to end
The war had changed the smell of gunpowder
the wind’s tone
and the pain’s shape.

Hossein Rahmani was born in Mashhad, Iran (August 9th 1992) and is studying in the field of agro-economy at University of Torbat Heydarieh. Hossein’s poems were published on Literati Quarterly (Spring 2016).