Song of Drone
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.