The Flower

The poet from Iran
was born before her parents,
is what the interpreter says.
It means she knows everything.
When we give her the tour,
she says, Letā€™s go inside,
where she keeps wearing her
white coat. In the campus chapel
under the new ceiling, beside the new
stained glass, she asks me
if I go to church every week
and I have to say Iā€™m Jewish.
She takes the quietest step
backward. And when we get to the room
where sheā€™s going to read she sits
in the row in front of me and turns to say,
Sorry to give you my back.
What you say in Iran, I know, is
A flower has no back.


This poem was first published in Beloit Poetry Journal, and is republished with permission of the author.

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