Breast Cancer by Ali Asadollahi

Didn’t I tell you not to take it seriously?
Didn’t I tell you to put your hands in those torn pockets sometimes?
Look
For something in that old raincoat’s lining
For something under the rugs
Under your eyelid – with lashes behind –
Under the iris – as it’s cut by a paper –
But
Keep calm darling, keep calm
– It’s a paper, not a knife; once it is wet, it never cuts –
Keep calm darling, keep calm
Something will be found
Something before the cleavers reach the lambs’ sternum
Something before two malignant breasts, on the butcher block
Before blood, seeping out from a freezer bag on the kitchen table:
– 700 grams of me. Adios.

Then you hit the streets and laughed
With stitches
With the red edge of a paper
With the eyelid you must put your finger underneath, 
to scrape off last days’ sediments by nail
But
I’m scared of blood
I’m afraid of peeling the skin off muscles
Should become a vegetarian
Should settle at Garden of Eden, picking apples
Should drink out of golden goblets all through the night
Such that wine rivers take my plastered corpse home, 
beyond the sewer hatch
Since it’s the decisive deceivers’ fate
Since as they were throwing your leftovers in the meat grinder, we had to smile
Without letting the fabric pieces, you would stuff in your bra, stick out from our mouths
From our faces’ grooves
Half of my hands were holding your hands
The other half were rotting, in the kitchen, in the heat
And the flies were spawning their tiny pearls into my wounds and mourning
As if they came
From a meat slicer machine
From julienning the lumps
Half of my eyes weren’t fit in the socket
The other half turned back, spinning in my shattered mind:
Keep calm darling, keep calm
We shall find eternal paradise
We shall have grapes and honey instead of limbs
Come and baptize your body in blessed water
Laugh and put fig leaves on your gashes.





Ali Asadollahi, an Iranian poet, is the author of six Persian poetry books and winner of some prestigious Persian poetry awards, such as Iran’s Best Young Poet award (2010), Iran’s Journalist Society Award (2010). Asadollahi is a permanent member and the current secretary of the Iranian Writers’ Association (founded in 1968 by forty-nine notable Persian writers with the objective of promoting freedom of speech). His works have appeared in Alchemy, Denver Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Palaver, Roanoke Review, Writing Disorder, and others.