Scarlet stigma, thin
as a wish fingers
plucked
from the flushed
iris salt and sugar
ground to dust
and rosewater bloomed
to molten gold
in the marble
crucible
my hand, limp
from the pestle, spilled
over the words,
soaking the page with fragrant saffron—
one more failure,
the instructions
dyed to the letter.
But that’s no matter.
Let it—planted and plucked,
like us, in other fields,
and like us worn by salt
and sweetness to what is—
gild the day’s last page,
which even now (too soon)
one stained finger turns
beyond the stony lip …
Armen Davoudian is the author of the poetry collection The Palace of Forty Pillars and the translator, from Persian, of Hopscotch by Fatemeh Shams. He grew up in Isfahan, Iran, and is a PhD candidate in English at Stanford University.