Portside

What I love most are weddings and funerals.

I feast on one so I can feast on the other,

for days I wait in song.

Am I a honeybee, or a bagpipe?



An angel, or a dragon?

Above all things a flying dragon of hellfire

and a blessed light of the divine, an angel.

Why are my eyes so big?



To taste the foods spread beneath me to feed

a never-ending appetite for the delectable animals,

vegetables, minerals, plastics in motion, or rigid

like tombs I mark, double, or triple tap to strike.



My intentions are transparent, my patience legendary.

I hover and watch for weeks, like a zamurah

piper in the marketplace waiting for a glimpse

of his burfi-sweet beloved.



The fire in my belly launches in a gentle

hiss to ignite the celebration

to decimate and devour the caravan of delicacies.

Smoke rises to greet me.

Note: “Targeted strikes conform to the principle of humanity.”

                        John Brennan, CIA Director

                        Eric Holder, Attorney General



Esther Kamkar has published three collections of poetry, Hummingbird Conditions, a letterpress limited edition, and the chapbook A Leopard in My Pocket and more recently Hum of Bees (Zibapress). John Waterman says, “Esther Kamkar’s poetry is as changing as the ocean, as passionate as a pomegranate tree in blossom, as deep and clear as a pool in a mountain stream.” Born in Tehran, Iran, she has lived in the USA since 1973. Published in many literary journals, her poetry has been anthologized in The Forbidden: Poems from Iran and its Exiles and Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora.