Separated from herbs and rice,
by knife and rifle, a fish in a fracture
of Caspian and Pacific. I remember
nothing of departure or arrival,
nothing of language lost or found,
nothing but this place of both
and neither, a wound of salt surrounding
as threats trill across desert and sea,
an orchestra of terror looming,
leaving me an orphan, flagless.
My name torn in half and sutured, yet
when someone asks how to pronounce it
the accents all scatter and hide,
because there is no right answer in a war
between the one that made me
and the one that raised me,
the one that shamed me
and the one that shames me,
between the chador
and the razor blade,
yasmin and jasmine,
tea and coffee.
There is only a dash,
a gash,
and I lay there,
Floundering.
Niku Rice was born in Tehran, raised in California, and now lives in the suburbs of Detroit with her husband and three children. She is a doula and childbirth educator
