The opening section, set in Iran after the revolution, explores the impacts of the repressive regime, especially on women. With varying points of view, Shidmehr examines how children, marriage, criminal justice and even relations between siblings become warped. Her spare, graceful, understated lines make the brutality they reveal all the more shocking.<\/p>\n
For example, the first poem, \u201cAlive,\u201d begins with the unsettling stanza:<\/p>\n
Under the knife blade,
\nmy mother\u2019s broken hand in a sling,
\npurple peels fall
\nover the face of the counter.<\/p>\n
The second stanza unveils a facial bruise (foreshadowed by the onion skin on the \u201cface\u201d of the counter), a scald, neck scratches and a crutch under a chador. The final stanza (with my emphasis inserted) leaves an unforgettable image of indifference:<\/p>\n
Feet tangled in the hem of her chador; Poems in the second section of the book depict the continuing pain of those who escape: broken ties with family, even children; separation from remembered joys. Its opening poem, \u201cLovers\u2019 Applications,\u201d depicts the frail link of a chatline in extended metaphors of knitting, thread, fabric and yarn. The final stanza:<\/p>\n I push my nails into my palm The book\u2019s final section moves to getting on with life and travelling in countries not of the poet\u2019s origin or adoption. Some of the poems here feel slight compared to the power bombs in the first section, but here, too, are delights, such as \u201cEve\u2019s Eureka,\u201d in which Eve dreams of a time when:<\/p>\n \u2026 all Men of Science Shidmehr has succeeded in exposing the pain of repression, loss and displacement without sentimentality or political rant. She evokes in few words a real human being, as in this stanza from \u201cA Jingle of Bracelets\u201d:<\/p>\n her sweaty fingers pushing This is a book well worth reading.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nmy father, leaning over the banister,
\nslips his hands back in his pockets,<\/em>
\nwatching as she rolls down the stairs, still alive.<\/p>\n
\nuntil it hurts. I think we are caught
\non the yarn of it. The person who knits
\nthis world into a village has dropped
\nthe ball and it is rolling away from us.<\/p>\n
\n\u2026
\ncan finally admit
\n\u2026
\nthey have no teeth
\nto bite the apple
\nI have found.<\/p>\n
\ncrumpled one thousand-toman bills into my hand
\nor mossy coins slid between the chinks
\nin her chador, from the soft fabric
\nof her bra. Sometimes the tin bell sound
\nof her bracelets is a silver arc like ice
\non the base of my spine.<\/p>\n