Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: This poem exhibits a kind of radical empathy as the speaker inhabits the experience of travel expert Rick Steves watching a video of himself visiting Iran (here’s the one-hour special the poem refers to). At times, the “I” seems fluid, a consciousness that knows more about Iran than Steves, as the Steves on-screen asks questions about religion and cultural mores. The poem straddles the line between critique/satire of the White tourist experience and a kind of compassion for the lisping, inquisitive White tourist himself, even as it shows us scenes from Iran, an alternative tour.
To hear Darius read the poem, click below:
Here’s a Love Poem to Rick Steves Watching Rick Steves’ Iran
A farmer slings a rock to scare a bird from his barley, and I wish
I could teach you to say, daastet dard na-koneh, I hope your hand
doesn’t hurt. I wish I could be your best friend, stay by
your side, noticing neutrally the marg bar Israel signs in the splendor
of Isfahan’s largest mosque. Holy geometers dip their camo caps in
Friday prayer, and shake hands. A family picnics on the gravesites
of their sons made martyrs. You ask thoughtful questions
of everyone you meet. Don’t you wish America and Iran
could be friends? How do you find
a boy? Can I shake your hand? Can I shake his hand
for you? Your slight lisp, your slow, rhythmic
speaking, knuckles knit together as you ask your guide if Sunnis
and Shi‘ites share heaven. And of course they do, and of course
you know that. In your body,
you are designing a church inside a mosque
inside a synagogue. You place strings
of saffron on your tongue and ask Am I red? to the delight
of the bazaari. You are now the soft yellow of early morning
sun. And Iran glows from inside you. I wish I could be, if only
for a moment, the motorcyclist sitting in front of you in the midday
traffic. Your hands clasp tightly around my
waist, trusting me to navigate, to keep you
safe and balanced, to take you where you need to go (and somewhat
safely) as you think about the loose fit
of your helmet, the fear that still exists, here,
that you can’t show on your face on camera, thinking
of your brains splattered across the side of a passing bus
or dripping down the front of a Tehran mural. I wish to be both you
and the cyclist, as I hop off my bike and thank me, shake my hands
together, kiss all four of my cheeks. I push my glasses up
from the gentle slope of my nose so I can see myself
better. I head off into the throng of traffic as I stand there on the curb
watching me go. I live to breathe another day, to say, Hello.
Darius Atefat-Peckham is an Iranian American poet and essayist. His work has appeared in the Poem-a-Day Series, Indiana Review, Florida Review, Barrow Street, Crab Orchard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of How Many Love Poems, forthcoming from Seven Kitchens Press. Atefat-Peckham currently studies English and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard College.
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