The Elephants

Just out of the shower
Still in towels
I sit at my desk
In front of my laptop
Surfing the net
For world news

The cathedral looms large outside the window
Paler than ever in DC’s rainy gloomy weather

It’s the last day
Of the Persian New Year holidays
It’s the thirteenth
Day of the first month
Of spring
Iranians celebrate
The “Day of Nature”

And it’s the death anniversary of a famous Iranian photojournalist

He is in the bathroom
Taking a shower
My lover

I tell him about the man
I tell him to join me
To look with me

I want to introduce him
To one of my
People
So we sit
Clicking
From one photograph to another
From one series to another

Black and white, he says
My lover to me
So we choose
Black and white
Not color

We choose

War

Not
Prostitutes
Not
Revolutionaries
Not
Monsters

There are other series
That I don’t remember
Who can remember? Anything
Everything

This on a quiet night

We read
We made love
We took a shower
He touched me
I made tea

Tea is an idea
War is an idea
Life is an idea
Life is a cliché
The leaves from an olive tree
are clichés

War is a cliché
Tea is not a cliché
This the problem

A tank
A trench
A clergy
A soldier
Wounded
Dead
All

All are cliché
Our dilemma

The photojournalist followed his own death and put the images here, on a tray, as if to
say “Here you go, here it is, all that there is, all that you need,” and left
Forever
Even the journalist is a cliché

I skip the images
One after another
I search
For a particular one
To show him

I’m

east

He’s

west

Even that is a cliché

The particular picture
I find
Finally

a bullet a helmet a bandage hope youth debris a stretch of land a nurse holds up a baby a baby who is but a torso of flesh and blood all burnt up with hips and legs attached to it the nurse’s mouth all covered up the nurse’s eyes staring staring away minding the camera the stump that once was a baby

d
a
n
g
l
i
n
g
in midair
posing
for the camera

the nurse’s hand resting on the waist

of the
once-upon-a-time

baby

The silhouette of a man sneaking in halfway into the picture from behind

a wall

I
Sit on the lap of my lover and he is affectionate and I feel the warmth of his fingers
through the fabric of my blouse and

I
Stare at the pictures and think about how those are the images that ran over again and
again through the TV channels and newspapers of my childhood

I
Shiver

And the baby’s flesh stares back at the nurse and at me and at my lover and at all that is
beyond us And the baby’s flesh stares back And the baby’s flesh stares back at the nurse
And the baby’s flesh stares back at me And the baby’s flesh stares back

And my lover stares at me and touches me
And I hear sirens

And the journalist finds his death on a mine in the land of the once-upon-a-time enemy

Arms
Legs
Fingers
Eyes

I wonder what else is
left to see
I wonder what else is
a cliché