Leila Farjami

Genocide

Mother,
what’s wartime medicine?

Saltwater, chest rub, eucalyptus brew,
sweet lemons, contraband antibiotics
you couldn’t find on the black market.

You asked if I could swallow or breathe.
You whispered to your sister,
She might die in her sleep.

The doctor sent to frontlines,
the nurse who gave me a shot
last week—returned in sealed bags.

Before the house fell, my drawing
was tacked to the wall—
Tulips. Half-stemmed.

The Jars of Robb, ُرّب

Tomatoes plump even in wartime,
always saved for spring cooking.

Restless red, crushed
to pulp—thick potion.

The heart of Iranian cuisine: ربُ, robb.
Mother never knew the tomato’s journey:

from Aztec soil, across barbed
borders, through oceans

brought by British hands.
No history needed for a perfect paste.

I sat at the kitchen table,
watching her peel, quarter ruby flesh—

juice spilling into an alloy pot.
She reduced it by half on high flame,

stirring often—souls gurgling
in lava, nearly boiling over.

When ready, she sieved it—
extracting seeds from pulp,

embryos from a womb.
Back on the stove, foam

swirled into paisleys, then gone.
In the end: talisman.

A ghazal of edible verse.
Poetry sealed in jars.

Each lid marked
with the solar year,

shelved in the basement.
None survived the explosions.

Leila Farjami is an Iranian-American poet and psychotherapist in Los Angeles, author of Daughter of Salt. Her work appears in Ploughshares, AGNI, and Pleiades.