by Amee Nassrene Broumand
Nursery songs feed on murk and grow bloated—
the birds of Farid ud-Din Attar croaking sour in a cage.
Insouciant, children and bluebirds gab happily enough
as if commonplace sounds could polish away
cracks in the mantle, monsters smudged
upon the barricade.
Our parents clear cobwebs without speaking of spiders.
We’re the blue voice of the diaspora, and note
the ossifying.
Rags become cuttlebone and prowl the air, sprouting legs.
Thursday afternoon becomes a thing unknown—
Is this winter?
No one wants to live in a ghost story.
After the heat stops, blood cools into a stone.
Falling, the down
of a billion geese—
so soft. She sleeps.
Six feet from the house and all’s lost.
Amee Nassrene Broumand has recent or upcoming work in Burning House Press, Sundog Lit, Word Riot, Rivet, Right Hand Pointing, and elsewhere. The daughter of an Iranian immigrant, she was born near Los Angeles and homeschooled in the Pacific Northwest. She has a B.A. in Philosophy and English from Boise State University, where she tutored Introduction to Logic for six semesters, wrote a Senior Tutorial on metaphor for the Philosophy Department, and graduated summa cum laude. A self-taught poet, she has written over 3,500 poems and has just begun to publish.
A-Minor 
This was a fascinating read in its attentiveness to language and the hypnotic mystery of its narrative. The meaning of the poem is both central in importance but peripheral in reference. This is what builds in this work an intriguing complexity.
“Our parents clear cobwebs without speaking of spiders.”
And so too does the poet. The reader stands enthralled within a swirl of surreal images.