POLITICAL Poem: A Film upon the Skewer’s Edge, by Aref Moalemi

A cut-up verse
still drips from the veins of Amir,
flowing through the Fīn bathhouse—
where echoes scream
from the pulled syllables on cold stone arches.

▐ 10 dollar ▐
Is this the entry fee—
or the price of his blood?

▐ No Dogs Allowed ▐
Lest claws sink into memory
and return with the scent of the corpse.
Beware:
the guard cannot offer Amir’s bones
to satisfy every dog in Kāshān.

In a museum corner,
a boutique displays torn textiles:
“Made with one hundred percent natural dyes—
especially in liver-red, in charcoal-black.”
You, a suitable skewer—
your polished metal mirrors scorched memories.

I lift the burned shreds,
and on its shiny edge
my face is impaled.
I peel it back—
and find the cloth Amir once chose for his shroud.

Blood has learned new ways of seeing;
it circles,
weaving dead ends
through every fiber of cotton.
It fails—
but still,
his blood breathes through the weave
and clots along the museum’s wall.

Should I remove it—
the blood awakens hunger.
Who will it feast upon?

One hand sinks into wool:
a slaughtered sheep’s memories
shiver in my touch.
I can’t tell—
is the warmth from fleece,
or from the blood?

My other hand
slides through linen—
tainted with pruned softness
and the cotton fields
once watered by a farmer’s
two-thirds bodyweight in sweat.

Time’s boutique
has arranged its sacrifices
for consumer delight.

Now, drip by drip,
from the museum’s upper gallery—
these drops once washed blood away,
they witnessed murder
but were never called to testify.

Their reward:
to dwell atop the fountain.

There,
a spirit struggles—not yet released—
from the choking loop of self-harm.
It begs
from all still-possible moments
to suspend this one.
Perhaps it longs
to reclaim the breath
it lost
in the endless exhale of the fountain.

Perhaps
between the curls of arabesque,
it hopes to find a vein
that once belonged to Amir.

But the spirit,
fragmented across droplets,
remains lost—
for the fountain
is a failed connection
between pool and sky.
—
Aref Moallemi