Azita Ghahreman, trans. Kristian Carlsson and Johannes Göransson

Valentine's Day

Who claims that I love you?
Seven mountains, six oceans and two heavens are colluding against me
They lie
I sob into the trumpet flowers   despise you
I pour lime in your rivers   ink on your sheets
draw the outline of a witch on your pillow
   scribble horns on your portrait
                                                                to scare the fishes

*

I button up    put a curse
on my nipples
Fell the trees in your alley   erase your files
Say your name backwards   steal your shirt
Spread tar on your car window   strew nails in every road crook
Lock you in the bathroom    go to the  movies without a care
Put cockroaches in your glass   throw thumbtacks in your shoes
Every day I destroy the game  set out the pieces
            again

*

In the middle of my words I place a water park
   an abandoned airport behind the divide
At night I become the jinn's shouting in your ears
   a time bomb in your veins
Criss-cross I cut up your finest tie
Change my words like the wind
   archive your actions in a file

*

Phew! your voice   it topples my heart like a train whistle
your eyes are even stronger, two brass bowls
   full of sugar and cakes
You reek of saffron and red roses
Your heart is full of gold fish twisting around each other
From now on I will answer all your questions
            deny everything you say
I will throw molotov cocktails in your hair   turn you into Rimbaud
Pierce your dreams with my finger
   your good mood will trickle out

*

I will stir up your sleep
            frogs will turn into needles under the sheets
I will draw the birds of poetry as horses in trees the women
            as tea cans on tables
The squirrel and lion and anteater            jumbled together
            look just like you
Cat wounds and the warts of evil cannot  be let in
            through the chimney

*

The star doesn't stick mmm! to your forehead     you are always getting lost
All the hands of the world are pointing     toward your teeth
Step by step the alleys have            folded             all the way to my head
Foolishly I try to memorize your long number
The days of the world are inferior without castle walls and tower
Employed to observe you    my crushed eyes and deaf ears
are exhausted from laboring overtime

*

When I bang on the wall with your hammer
            the plates begin to give birth
You keep far away from my sharp forks
            make the instruments creak in my belly

*

Elephants walk in a trance through the circle of fire
Bears dressed in flower dresses     dance across barrels
Your crazy parrot dialect     chained me to India
If only they could get a cage so that the dragon would melt
            if they could serve up April instead of June
before the gluttonous monkey devours all the trumpet flowers
before the mountain troll pours out the world and spills it all over its skirt

*

Love is this red rose I tie to a stone
and suddenly throw at your window
Crashhhhhh!

Azita Ghahreman (b. 1962) is a prominent contemporary Iranian poet, who currently lives in Oxie outside of Malmö. She moved to Sweden in 2006. Several of her collections have been translated into Swedish and published by Smockadoll Förlag.

Kristian Carlsson (b. 1978) lives in Malmö. Since his debut in 1996, he has published more than 40 books, primarily books of poetry and conceptual writing. He has also published 30 books in translation by writers such as Anne Waldman, Valerie Solanas, and Rabindranath Tagore. In 2016, Dracopis Press published Swedish Poetry Nowadays, an anthology of contemporary Swedish poets that Carlsson edited and translated. In 2018, Journeyman Books in Dhaka is going to publish A Languishing Chain of Presence and Covering For Language, two English-language volumes of new and selected poems spanning his entire career.