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Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad

Bruise

For purplish blue-gray, we compress the three words
into a single kabood—for the sake of time, I imagine,
though what we boast in linguistic convenience
we lose to limited use, as in, we would never say the lavender
fields in the pale distance are kabood, or the majestic velvet
dress spanning the height of the mannequin, but the grisly
discoloring that is a bruise is kabood, the blood vessels
visible only in their rupture is kabood, the stain that spreads
when trauma collides with the body is kabood,
but those days when every breath was tender
like swelled skin, when grief traversed the whole of me
like internal bleeding, kabood was not the tone named
for my wound, and what a disservice to restrict
the closest shade we have for the conspicuous;
those mornings when I loathed applause for how well
I handled my sorrow, a pigeon, a kabootar
would fly to my bedroom window before the alarm,
before dawn every day, would coo deep from a throat
covered in ashy feathers, iridescent teal, faded mauve,
would coo so deep it sounded like a purr, choosing
to start her day perched on my sill, in the most frigid hour
on a concrete ledge, unlike any creature that needed
a warm nest, unlike any being that needed healing

from NER 40.4 (2019)
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Vol. 42, No. 1

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Writer’s Notebook

Writer’s Notebook—Field Dress Portal

Sarah Audsley

Writer’s Notebook—Field Dress Portal

Writing this poem was not a commentary on a rivalry between the sister arts—poetry and painting—but more an experiment in the ekphrastic poetic mode.

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