
TWO POEMS
In a Beginning
The first fig was a seed
buried in bone dust,
and soaked homelands
watered with famine & drought
this seedling: a man, a woman
interred in the cosm
of rootlings moved
through cracked matter
tectonic shifting, layers of russet
jagged sediment pushing together
how subcontinents came to existence
descending throughout
rings of time compressed into stacks.
spread forth despite life’s sprouts
scattered.
the leaves bloom pistils
in vernal tides
grow impermeable flesh,
a hardened shell
for times of trial.
branches fork forward
to where I stand
on roots with no name
bound to my feet.
The Wrong Kind of Flowers
Exotic at fifteen, a chariot tugging us forward and away from home court. The subterfuge. Beaten, broken, or handed down, we smuggled through the cut back. Poppies dry and ready to flame, bloom faded over tinfoil and held, with cones flared. Do you remember when we found those old cans of spray paint? I was teaching taller than my head, resisting my magpie instincts, but still falling, the crux of it all. Biting unwashed berries, tearing the flesh from the rind, the crux of it all. We were hidden amongst the decapitated flowers, severed by stem, detoured from life’s strife. Gourmet like dried roses, peppering my hips with detailed insides. Cramped under my own weight, the car is cold under my chin, the hollow pressed against my neck. I know the taste of fear isn’t mine, deflecting hardened chips against weak joints. My mother would say I breathed in the soul of the devil, leaking in and penetrating the vessel, showing the white flesh underneath.
Dena Rod is the Assistant Creative Nonfiction Editor for Homology Lit. Through creative nonfiction essays and poetry, Dena works to illuminate their diasporic experiences of Iranian American heritage and queer identity, combating negative stereotypes of their intersecting identities in the mainstream media.