I guess there is ecstasy here. The rhythmic hammers echoing through slick marble and tall ceilings. The song of men thumping their feet all the way up. On the rooftop garden, a fire once blackened and charred. My God, how did they ever get out. If I cup my hands over my ears, curl into […]
Darius Atefat-Peckham
DARIUS ATEFAT-PECKHAM is an Iranian-American poet and essayist. His work has appeared in Texas Review, Zone 3, Nimrod, Brevity, Crab Orchard Review, The Southampton Review, and elsewhere. In 2018, Atefat-Peckham was selected by the Library of Congress as a National Student Poet, the nation's highest honor presented to youth poets writing original work. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including My Shadow is My Skin: Voices from the Iranian Diaspora (University of Texas Press). Atefat-Peckham lives in Huntington, West Virginia and studies Creative Writing at Harvard College.
The Apartment
Celebration: Norooz
by Darius Atefat-Peckham
What a shitty life. Papa says. And lifts himself, crooked, like the balloons we set free after the celebration. We scrawled messages, crude tattoos on their bodies. Bibi tells me they will reach my mother and brother, orders me to watch carefully else we should lose them in the fog. They don’t visit me in […]
