Even the Farsi translation, the barely legible
print beneath each calligraphed line calls
for translation. How scholarly she is at ten,
squatting cross-legged, hunched over
the book of spells she spreads daily on her knees.

Thou shalt not touch the verses.

With the full length of her arm she turns
each page from one corner of the magic world
to the next, careful not to scare the sacred,
the gilded accents, little blades suspended,
twinkling over the cursive script.

Thou shalt not recite in a foreign tongue.

She loves the Arab tongue of God, she loves her lips
sliced with surahs, the consonants he thrusts
to the back of her throat, the long vowels
he sustains on her breath. Her incantations soar,
her white chador a floating tent sown

sunny with daisies beaming with childhood.
She pauses to drink at the turquoise bank:
the hand-painted margin of the page hems
her faith and brims with embossed blossoms.

Then dervishlike, rocking with each sibylline verse
that rises out of her pliant throat, she is the reverberating
masjid dome, poised over her paisley janamaz,
birds of praise come nesting, 
they come cooing, darting out and into her chador.

Each surah, the utterly incomprehensible
spell she incants from her proud minaret, her cupped hands
an invitation for God to join her, dance
with her on the naked waters of her childhood.
Before long, dancing, too, shall be forbidden.
from the book WHEN YOUR SKY RUNS INTO MINE / Elixir Press
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In Moslem theology, it is forbidden to recite the Quran in translation. As a child, I loved to pray and to recite the Quran, and even though I did not speak Arabic and could not draw meaning from the words, I was moved to an ecstatic, religious fervor by the music of the scriptures. As an adult, my experience with faith has grown and changed over time, but I am acutely aware that religion is an easy tool used to manipulate and indoctrinate young minds.

Rooja Mohassessy on "Intoxicated by Verses"
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Oliver de la Paz on Language as Form

"I started writing pantoums to demarcate section breaks to rectify what I saw as an imbalance in the work. I wanted to place the pantoum, which was originally a Malaysian form, against the sonnet's Western European tradition as a subtle nod to the complications that arise when attempting to adapt to a place."
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